The bitter smoking truth 🥃

One order for me at the bar, please.

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, let’s have a stiff drink. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.

Campo Viejo rioja wine at my apartment

Your local wine shop

Please don’t ask me how my story’s going. No, it’s not published yet. Yes, it will be, someday soon. In the meantime, you can find me at my desk, where I’ll be drinking a lot of forbidden coffee, and having an existential spiral about my career choices. (There’s nothing that really reminds you of how deeply innate the desire to be liked is, until you become a journalist — a person whose phone calls are universally dreaded and hated.) Here’s what you can do: Hand me a glass of wine. This one’s pretty great — and you can get it for under $20 (probably under $15 if you don’t live in such an expensive city). I’m shit at describing wine, but this is very much the kind of wine I like, dry and plummy and supremely gulp-able.

Chocolate ice cream van leeuwen at midnight (the time, not the place)

Your local NYC grocery store

I don’t usually like chocolate ice cream, but I really like this one. (But then again, I also keep saying that I don’t like Williamsburg, parties, human interactions, and movies, but I seem to enjoy it all anyways.) The reason I usually don’t love chocolate ice cream is that I like ice cream to taste creamy and clean, and usually chocolate ice creams come off too fudgy and cloying. Van Leeuwen’s chocolate pint is like biting into my favorite dark chocolate bar (Valhrona), except it’s cold and it melts. It tastes beautiful and fruity (for lack of a less pretentious word), and almost alcoholic. I like to eat it while drinking a glass of red wine, alone in my room with all the lights out except for a single candle flame, re-watching my favorite murders on Killing Eve.

 Murasaki sweet potatoes with sweet miso and butter at my kitchen

You can make this, too!

My miso obsession marches on. This week, I’m slathering equal parts of white miso (the other kinds will be way too salty!) and salted butter on steaming hot Japanese sweet potatoes. Some say that these Japanese sweet potatoes are the best kind of sweet potatoes. Now, I adore all sweet potatoes equally — but they do happen to be available at Trader Joe’s and are cheaper and easier to find than the rarer purple Hawaiian (Okinawan) sweet potatoes. I haven’t quite perfected my roasting method yet for these sweet guys and sometimes they’ve come out a tad bit over-crisped, so if anyone has a better method, let me know (I’ve been doing 400F for about 30-40 mins). 

Roasted coconut chips at Trader Joe’s

Your neighborhood Trader Joe’s

My Desk Snack of The Month award goes to these coconut chips from Trader Joe’s. They have a really great crispy texture, and are the perfect blend of salty and sweet. I just eat them straight from the bag, but every time I do, I think to myself that a handful would be the perfect topping to some curry or Thai food, preferable homemade. I don’t have too much else to say other than you should buy some for yourself, because I’m not sharing.

 Bitter Smoking Truthat Midnight’s

149 N 6th St, Brooklyn, NY 11249

The Bitter Smoking Truth is my perfect drink. Composed of bourbon, mole bitters, smoke, and demerara sugar, it’s dark and smokey, but not too harsh. It tastes like the top layer of a campfire mixed with brown sugar; it’s sweet like the scent of cologne on flannel. It’s stirred, not shaken. And best of all, it sounds incredibly dramatic when you order it at the bar, and is even more dramatic visually, as it arrives in a cloud of smoke. “I’ll have the bitter smoking truth,” I say. God, do I resent toxic masculinity, but I sure love to drink it.

Cheers,

Soph

Note: Next week, Five Things I Ate will take a break to spend time cooking with loved ones — unless she finds a little time to write. Wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!