So what did he feed them before Game 6? A seafood paella, a dish on the menu at both Sazon and Sofrito.

The recipe, after the jump.

- 6-8 servings -

2 cups white rice
1 cup sofrito (recipe here)
6 cups lobster stock with sazon
1/2 cup Spanish chorizo
12 shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 lobsters, 1 lb each, chopped into small pieces
20 mussels
10 littleneck clams
1 cup sliced, cleaned calamari
1 cup bay scallops
1/4 cup diced onions
1/4 cup diced bell peppers
1/2 cup white wine
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 roasted red pepper, julienned
1/3 cup green olives
1/2 cup green peas
1/2 cup olive oil

Procedure

1. Cook the rice in lobster stock until fully ready.

2. Heat oil in a large saute pan on high heat. Cook garlic, onions, and peppers. Let cook for several minutes.

3. Add all the seafood. Cover with white wine and sofrito, and let simmer until seafood has cooked and liquid has cooked down.

4. Add rice, stir, and serve.

Association to Benefit Children champions the right of every child to a positive, nurturing childhood. ABC creates program models that are easily replicable, humane, comprehensive and cost-effective and include family preservation, early childhood education, health, housing, mental health and youth services.

ABC truly does God's work, and I am proud to be working with them.

We came up with the idea of holding a Thanksgiving benefit for ABC featuring foods from great chefs around New York. Having worked on many food benefits before, I knew that the most difficult challenge is getting the chefs, who are insanely busy and besieged with similar requests, to actually show up at these kinds of events.

So I figured that if I asked the chefs to just make the food at their restaurants, we could have Showstoppers pick everything up, we would make the chefs happy and we would end up with a world-class Thanksgiving buffet dinner.

Thus was the annual Thanks for Giving Thanksgiving buffet dinner benefit born. It will be held once again this Monday, November 9, at 6:00 pm. at the Union Theological Seminary.

How to win tickets, after the jump.

• Daniel Boulud ~ Daniel ~ Squash soup
• Lara Brumgnach ~ Felidia ~ Tiramisu
• Andy D'Amico ~ Nice Matin ~ Cranberry Relish
• Sandy Davis ~ Showstoppers ~ Turkey, Gravy, Dressing and Bourbon Soaked Sweet Potatoes
• David Pasternack ~ Esca ~ Roast Squash
• Mike Psikalis ~ Kefi ~ Stuffing
• Tom Valenti ~ Ouest ~ Soft Polenta
• Rack & Soul ~ Baby Back Ribs
• Gabrielle Hamilton ~ Prune ~ Mini Apple Pies
• Two Little Red Hens ~ Cookies and Brownies
• Bouchon Bakery-Chocolate bouchons

Believe me when I tell you that is one serious pre-Thanksgiving feed. In addition to the dinner there's live music, a live auction, and many items being auctioned off silently. The live auction includes a pizza tour I'm giving to four people along with signed copies of A Slice of Heaven and a dinner for ten cooked by Mike Psilakis of Anthos and Kefi that I'll be co-hosting.

Want to attend? Get tickets here —or enter to win a pair right here on Serious Eats.

To enter, just answer this question in the comments: What are you thankful for this holiday season?

Winner will be chosen at random from among eligible commenters. Contest will end and comments will close at 7 p.m. ET, Sunday, November 8, 2009. Winner will recieve one pair of tickets. One entry per community member. The standard Serious Eats contest rules apply.

[Photos: Laren Spirer]

On Monday night, the Astor Center hosted its first Tweetup, co-sponsored by Chartreuse and LUPEC NYC. The idea behind the Tweetup was to gather up cocktail enthusiasts, many of whom are on Twitter, for an interactive event/cocktail party. We were fortunate enough to have Jean-Marc Roger, the president of Chartreuse Diffusion, visiting from France, which he only does twice a year. And although he wasn't willing to share the 130-item ingredient list for the age-old spirit, which is still made by monks in the French Alps, he was kind enough to donate yellow and green Chartreuse so the ladies of LUPEC could create Chartreuse-based cocktails for the group.

There were six drinks in all, each with an entirely different flavor profile, but each featuring yellow or green Chartreuse, and sometimes even both. The Bubbly Scribe was a light and easy drink, perfect for kicking of the night, created by Meaghan Dorman, of Raines Law Room. The citrus blends beautifully with the Chartreuse, and the bubbles lift it to a festive level. If you haven't been to Raines, it's a perfect example of the pre-prohibition speakeasy cocktail dens that are dotting the city of late, named after an 1896 New York State tax law passed in an attempt to curb liquor consumption. It's down a few stairs, filled with cozy booths equiped with buzzers for summoning the waitstaff.

The recipe, after the jump.

1 oz green chartreuse
1 oz yellow chartreuse
3/4 oz fresh lime
3/4 oz fresh grapefruit

Shake and strain into an ice-filled collins glass, and top with champagne.

Raines Law Room

48 West 17th Street, New York NY 10011 (map)

[Photo: Kathy Chan]

One square big enough to share. A banana cake with the slightest tang of sour cream. A smother of chocolate, closer to a ganache than frosting. And a single banana chip to finish. Thumbs up. If you pop the cake in the toaster oven for a few minutes, the edges get extra crisp and the dark chocolate turns molten—a delicious lava bit with each forkful.

It's lovely, yes, but the single best item at Oro Bakery are those madelines, plump, moist and lemony. You might remember them from our post on Serious Eats's Guide to the Best Madeleines in New York City. They are stellar, I kid you not!

Oro Bakery

375 Broome Street, New York NY 10013 (map)
212-941-6368
orobakerybar.com

[Photos: Midtown Lunch]

One Pratt student, Ali Pulver, has tackled a problem so many urbanites face—where, on a busy city block, can you eat a street food lunch?—and devoted her graduate thesis to it. Midtown Lunch reports that she's come up with a "Hydrantable" (pictured left), a tabletop that fits over any fire hydrant, and a "Lunch Shelf" (pictured right), with super-strong magnets to attach to any metal post. Consider your juggling problems solved.

(We won't vouch for the legality of either of these. But great ideas, no?)

Follow her work at PopUpLunch.com.

[Flickr: Lanaflickr]

Dosas may be the popular choice for Indian brunch in Curry Hill, but the Bowery's Indian-inspired Double Crown takes a totally different approach. Drawing from the historic blending of English and Southeast Asian cuisines, Double Crown's brunch has a refined culinary point of view that comes across clearly in all its dishes. Of those I've tried, my favorite is the Grilled Sambal Prawns with Scrambled Eggs, which gets a robust hit of flavor from the traditional chili jam—a condiment, somewhat ironically, that's typically served with dosas).

Surprisingly, though, it's the eggs and not the prawns that absorb most of the spice from the sambal. It's a comfortable heat that develops without overpowering, often balanced by the fine sprigs of cilantro strewn over the dish. The prawns—giant, whole, and grilled to a deliciously sticky, caramelized point—are definitely an unusual brunch protein, but their sheer size makes them hearty enough to stand up to the eggs and toast alongside them, while their delicate sweetness adds the kind of complexity you'd expect from a dinner entree.

Double Crown

316 Bowery, New York NY 10012 (map)
212-254-0350
doublecrown-nyc.com

[Photo: Robyn Lee]

Yesterday, Mario Batali announced that he'd be doing away with the enoteca portion of Del Posto, extending the fine dining menu to the full space. Ed has always been of the opinion that the more relaxed, reasonably priced part of the dining room was the way to experience Del Posto. What prompted Batali's decision?

"We're going to get our second Michelin star and a four-star New York Times review this year, and this is how we're going to do it," Mario tells The Feed. In other words, for the critics—not the diners.

What do you think? Has the enoteca held him back from higher acclaim? (For the record, Bruni's 2006 review didn't even mention it.) Or is Batali cutting out the restaurant's biggest asset?

[Photos: Brian Yarvin]

The other day, I received a breathless message from Eric Eisenbud, as knowledgeable a food enthusiast as there is here in Central New Jersey, and what he said left me in deep shock: the Dragon Palace—the state´s best Sichuan restaurant—had translated its renowned four page lunch menu into English. We agreed to eat there a few days later.

Ten minutes before we were supposed to meet, I stood at the entrance and noticed that there were no English language lunch menus at all. Not that there was any need for one. Two-thirds of the tables were taken and, to my ear, Chinese was being cheerfully spoken at each one. The only non-Chinese people besides myself were in large parties. From past eavesdropping, I suspected that they were all from the same workplaces.

Soon Eric and I were seated—a nice table right by the free scallion pancakes. (He has some pull here. When he sent back the tea made from a bag and asked for the real stuff, they cheerfully gave it to him.) But when the menu was put in front of us, I saw that it wasn't quite right. It practically began with General Tso's Chicken, a dish as American as apple pie. (My own, completely unsubstantiated, hypothesis is that General Tso served in the New Jersey National Guard.) I was crushed.

Here´s the rundown: Pork With Potato had bits of minced pork stir fried with thin strips of potato. Chinese dishes with potato are common enough, but finding them on New Jersey English menus are a rare thrill. Long Squash was the vegetable that some people call "Chinese Okra." Spicy Fish Fillet With Chopped Chili was classic Sichuan, seasoned and bright red with oil. Finally, there was Bacon With Leeks, the signature lunchtime dish. I've raved about it before on Serious Eats and undoubtedly will rave about it again.

We cleaned our plates.

I left puzzled, though. What exactly was it that I expected? A linguistic tour de force from an overworked suburban restaurant owner? It's no secret that the Dragon Palace is one of a handful of New Jersey restaurants with stellar cooking and almost no accommodation for non-Chinese speaking food enthusiasts. If you've ever spent a few hours with a dictionary, you'll know that rendering a few hundred Chinese dish names in English is no easy task. You'd also quickly find out that many ingredients have no name in English at all, even though they´re commonly served in all sorts of New Jersey cuisines—chayote, for example. What do you call them?

Then, you've got to ask, "Who's going to care?" Just how many non-Chinese reading Chinese food enthusiasts are there here? Isn´t it enough to have fifteen or twenty dishes available for them? And finally, what about the majority of English speaking customers? The people who work in the big office buildings at Metropark, the eighty percent (at least) of the neighborhood that doesn't consider Chinese to be its first language?

In the mind of the owner, in the comments of Serious Eats readers, and based on the
behavior of too many people that I know well, non-Chinese Americans go to Manhattan for "real" Chinese anyway. It's their loss. The dishes coming out of Edison Chinese kitchens—meant for a well-to-do, suburban Chinese audience—are some of the best in the New York area. Of course, without some serious coaching, those of us who don't read Chinese will never know just how good their meals can be.

Dragon Palace

1635 Oak Tree Road, Edison NJ 08820 (map)
732-549-7554

[ The Wandering Eater ]

• Chocolates from the new François Chocolate Bar [The Wandering Eater]
• Grilled mushrooms at Hasaki: "Sprightly white shimeiji, bluefoots, meaty chanterelles, king oyster, maitake, grilled on a flat iron casserole with soy sauce and butter." [Eat Drink One Woman]
• The Japanese fried chicken lunch is back at Lovely Day [Lunch with Front Studio]
• Fish with Sour Cabbage Soup from Spicy & Tasty [A Passion For Food]

A few I'm inclined to agree with:

• 58. Do not bring judgment with the ketchup. Or mustard. Or hot sauce. Or whatever condiment is requested.
• 64. Specials, spoken and printed, should always have prices.
• 69. If someone wants to know your life story, keep it short.
• 88. Do not ask if a guest needs change. Just bring the change.
• 95. Never hover long enough to make people feel they are being watched or hurried, especially when they are figuring out the tip or signing for the check.

What do you think of the list? And what would you add to the rules for restaurant staffers?

Mmm, fish and chips. [Photo: Robyn Lee]

Guy Fawkes Night
Thursday, November 5, 2009, 8:00 p.m.
"Remember, remember, the Fifth of November"—known in England as Guy Fawkes Day. 404 years after the near-explosion of Parliament, head to the Bell House for $3 Newcastle, Chip Shop nibbles, and all sorts of Brit music. Free admission. The Bell House, 149 Seventh Street, Brooklyn; 718-643-6510; event website

Breast Cancer Benefit
Thursday, November 5, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Join Stuffed Artisan Cannolis for a breast cancer fundraiser: free prosecco and pink cannolis. $10 suggested donation to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Stuffed Artisan Cannolis, 176 Stanton Street, 212-995-2266‎

Cook. Eat. Drink. Live.
November 6-8, 2009
At this annual event, taste over one hundred wines and spirits, bites from some of New York's best restaurants, and get a head-start on your holiday shopping. Chat with major players in the food world and see demos from leading chefs and mixologists. $65/ticket. The Tunnel / La.Venue, 608 West 28th Street; event website

Events further down the line, after the jump.

Farm-Maker Dinners At Craft
November 9, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
At the first of Craft's new "Farm-Maker" dinners in the restaurant's private dining room, Tom Colicchio will prepare a five-course dinner featuring produce from Rick Bishop's Mountain Sweet Berry Farm and Hudson Valley Foie Gras. Rick Bishop will be on hand to discuss his farm. $275 includes paired wines, meal, and gratuity. Craft, 43 East 19th Street; 212-780-0880; restaurant website

Heston Blumenthal Book Signing
November 11, 2009, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
At Alessi in Soho, meet Heston Blumenthal, chef and owner of Michelin three-star The Fat Duck, and pick up a copy of The Fat Duck Cookbook. Alessi Soho, 130 Greene Street

[Photo: Kathy Chan]

For the most part, I stay away from tutti-fruit, rainbow colored sweets—you know, those too colorful for their own good sort of desserts. But at Stogo, the dairy free ice cream stop in the East Village, their spelt-based red velvet flavor is oddly intriguing. Soy-based ice cream, check. Coconut milk-based ice cream, check. But spelt-based ice cream? This was unusual.

Spelt's nutty, distinctive taste comes through most clearly in this "ice cream," overpowering the intended flavor, red velvet. Red velvet cake crumbs are speckled throughout the batter, staining the base a light pink, but those bits are whispers in a intensely spelt-flavored ice cream.

Stogo

159 Second Avenue, New York NY 10003 (map)
stogonyc.com

[Photos: Tia Kim]

Much has been written about Bon Chon, the first Korean fried chicken chain in the states that made Americans put down their KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) for a different KFC (Korean Fried Chicken).

However, two of the Bon Chon franchises in New York, one off of 32nd Street and one in Flushing, have pulled a Palin and gone rogue. The two restaurant-bars are now calling themselves "Mad for Chicken." Considering the former K-Town Bon Chon was my go-to wings and beer spot, the news was a bit unsettling. So a few days ago, I decided I needed some wings to settle my nerves.

Like before, the chicken takes thirty to forty minutes to prepare. So I started on the Dduk Boki, rice cakes in a red pepper sauce with fish cakes (odeng) and cheese (American and mozarella). I know everyone finds cheese a bit weird on Korean food, but you can also order the ddukboki without the cheese for a dollar less. Me, I like cheese on ddukboki. It's Korean fast food, so I leave my cheese snobbery at the door. Also, when the ddukboki is really spicy, the cheese rounds out the sharp notes and makes the sauce creamier.

The Ddukboki at Mad For Chicken, however, tasted different. The sauce was too sweet, there were more fish cakes than rice cakes, and the American cheese singles were barely melted on top—the shape was still apparent—as opposed to melted beforehand and drizzled. The cheese not looking appetizing, I didn't mind so much, but the sweetness of the sauce and the fact that there wasn't enough rice cakes in the ddukboki was just wrong. I wanted ddukboki, not odengboki.

About twenty to thirty minutes later, when the ddokboki first arrived, the wings finally made an appearance. At first glace it looked the same, but I noticed, along with the chicken and cubes of pickled radish, the wings now come with carrot sticks, celery sticks, and a small container of mysterious white sauce that tasted like a cross between blue cheese and ranch dressing. According to the waitress, it was blue cheese, but whatever it is, toss it out. These aren't buffalo wings, no blue cheese should be necessary.

After one bite, it was confirmed. Both the soy-garlic and the spicy are as delicious as ever without any white sauce. The wings had a crisp lightly glazed shell, sticky but almost greaseless to the touch, with moist innards that were steaming hot. The wait is annoying, but the pay-off is freshly fried wings. (If you didn't know, the chicken at Bon Chon and Mad for Chicken is fried twice so the fat is rendered off the skin and the wings are extra crunchy.)

As for the sauces, soy-garlic tasted exactly like the original, but I thought the spicy was a tad hotter than previous. There was more of a detectable gochujang (red pepper paste) taste in the glaze. Not a bad thing, unless you found the heat level just bearable in the past.

The drink menu, for the most part, hasn't changed much. I usually like Blue Moon because it's a light citrusy beer that goes well with fried foods. However, if you want Killian's on tap, Mad for Chicken now has a flashy DayGlo beer dispenser, if you order a minimum of two liters, that supposedly keeps your beer cold for two hours. Personally, I don't feel my beer has to be bubbling away to a techno beat, but the dispenser does provide a certain amount of entertainment. Check out their 28 second video on their website. It's just too much.

Mad beer dispenser and overly sweet odengboki aside, I'll be back to Mad for Chicken. Sadly for Bon Chon, the name "ain't no thang" if the wing recipe is the same.

Mad for Chicken

314 5th Ave, 2nd Floor, New York NY 10001 (b/n 31st & 32nd Street; map)
212-221-2222

Name: Jill DeGroff
Location: New York
Occupation:Graphic designer, artist, and author
Website: saloonartist.com

How did you get started as an artist? I've been drawing as long as I can remember. I moved to Manhattan when I was 17 and while riding the Seventh Avenue IRT to work each day, was mesmerized by the assortment of different faces—I began to carry a small sketch pad with me.

Did you spend time drawing bartenders before you met your husband, Dale? I have always sketched all kinds of people and still do to this day—anyone from any occupation, from every walk of life, but nightlife especially.

How did you select your subjects and elicit their stories for your recently released book, "Lush Life, Portraits from Behind the Bar"? I don't, they select me. I meet an interesting character, I must draw them. I have many, many sketchbooks full of characters and stories for the next editions—which will be more of a Bar-boheme kind of thing, more artists and musicians, and dig more into the underbelly of society. This edition was dedicated to mixologists, whom you need to catch in the wee hours towards the end of a shift, in a contemplative mood, to elicit a good story.

Some people have a ton of stories to tell, others can't conjure up even one. The ones who've devoted a good deal of time carousing—they have the good stories, especially if they've been running wild for most of their life and avoided the tethers of domestic life or corporate structure. Take my husband for example, who had the additional advantage of being immune to guilt! (I'm only kidding.)

But my all-time favorites are rum drinks: Daiquiris made with fresh squeezed fruit, Mojitos with spearmint form my garden. I can pretend I'm in the tropics, sleeping in a hammock in a Rousseau-esque jungle. I am especially nuts for a Havana Club, with a touch of tonic and fresh lime juice. At the Victoria Room in Sydney they have a contraption at the bar that extracts the sugar from a piece of sugar cane and they add this to the drink—it was marvelous.

What are your favorite local hangouts? Used to be Carnegie Club Bar & Books, when they had the live Tuesday night jazz sessions with the Stan Rubin Orchestra. There was such a wonderful assortment of crusty old wasted characters gathered there smoking their cigars. Probably my favorite bar is McSorleys, and it's my old neighborhood where I lived many years ago.

[Photo: Adam Kuban]

Best late-night eats? PJ Clarke's for hamburgers and to see Doug Quinn, he serves drinks with such speed, he looks like he has three sets of arms!

Last drink that knocked your socks off? We were at Joe and Nicole Desmond's Rhum Rhum Room—they host these fabulous Tiki parties. Dale had just come back from Peru where he had created a drink using asparagus, because it was asparagus season there, so he made his "Asparagusto" a green little aperitif with Barsol Pisco Quebranta that is incredibly delicious, especially with spicy food. Everyone went nuts over it, including their giant parrot.

What's in your fridge that you'd be embarrassed to tell us about? A gallon container of a cocktail left over from a barbecue we had last July. Naren Young and Jacob Briars flew in from New Zealand "for the day" and were muddling all these exotic fruits with 42 Below Vodka—they made this fabulous cocktail—enough for about a hundred people although there were only about twenty of us! so we had a gallon left over and I haven't had the heart to toss it. It's still drinkable!

Photo: Jimbo's

Everyone has a go-to person they call for restaurant/bar recommendations. Who's yours? When it comes to finding great characters to draw, I am always on the lookout for great little dives off the beaten path, especially ones with live music. I like to break away and go off exploring on my own, I'll find a place, slip in and order a beer and start drawing and usually make several friends before I leave.

When in a strange city, I'll ask the most offbeat or mischievous looking person I can find. That's how I met Rob Burr in Miami, one look at Rob and I knew he'd know a funky joint that had no business still existing, sure enough—he told me about Jimbo's. We ventured there the following afternoon and it was perfect—where cars go to die," as he put it. An outdoor bar or trailor camp of sorts. I drew all afternoon while nibbling on pickled fish and drinking beer.

But when looking for the perfect place to celebrate a particular occasion in New York, my husband Dale is a wizard when it comes to knowing where exactly to go. Where to find the best cocktails or the best bartender or the best jazz, Dale knows. He's devoted a lifetime to this discipline.

What's the best recommendation he/she has given you? He's given me hundreds over the years, where to begin? How about his very first—he recommended that I come home with him!

Lush Life is available online, and can be signed to order.

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

'A World of Spice, Part I: Hot!' at Astor Center
Saturday, November 7, 12 to 4 p.m., $125
First in a series on spices is an exploration of dried peppers and peppercorns; you'll cook a variety of fiery dishes focusing on the heat and flavor, including romesco dip with smoked Spanish pimenton, four peppercorn-encrusted steak au poivre, and a Sichuan pepper-spiked daikon salad.
Astor Center, 399 Lafayette Street (at East 4th Street), Manhattan; 212-674-7501; astorcenternyc.com for info and registration

'The Great New York Deli' at ICE
Sunday, November 8, 5 to 9:30 p.m., $110
Learn how to make the quintessential dishes of the Jewish New York delis. Start with Jewish penicillin (chicken soup with kreplach and matzoh balls), chopped liver, and reubens, and churn out knishes, noodle kugel, rugelach, and cheese blintzes.
The Institute of Culinary Education, 50 West 23rd Street (at Sixth Avenue), Manhattan; 800-522-4610; web.iceculinary.com for more info and registration

'Tapas Essentials' at ICC
Tuesday, November 10, and Thursday, November 12, 5:30 to 10:30 p.m., $675
Ever wanted to spend ten hours cooking up a variety of Spanish tapas? Now's your chance to use a cazuela and a griddle to cook dishes such as tortilla espanola (potato omelet), almendras fritas (savory sauteed almonds), and spicy albondigas (meatballs).
International Culinary Center, 462 Broadway (at Grand Street), Manhattan; 888-324-CHEF; internationalculinarycenter.com for info and registration

Decorating fancy cakes, and Chicago brews—after the jump.

'Windy City Brews & American Cheese' at Murray's Cheese
Friday, November 13, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., $65
Goose Island brewmaster Greg Hall pairs up with Murray's education coordinator Taylor Cocalis to discuss and taste some of his "malty" and "toasty" beers alongside some fascinating American cheeses.
Murray's Cheese, 254 Bleecker Street (at Sixth Avenue), Manhattan; 212-243.3289; murrayscheese.com for info and registration