NYC Ethnic Food - Not to be taken for Granted

Around this time every year I prepare for five months of living full time upstate in the Catskills. As June rolls around and it gets hot and humid and in NYC, I pack up everything and head to the cool, crisp mountains to run Catskill Maison for the summer/fall season. When there are no guests at our Bed and Breakfast I retreat to our summer home in Schoharie County. I absolutely love our family summer place, we have a wrap around porch with mountain views and a really wonderful grill! In Riverdale I really can't practice my grilling techniques on my small terrace with my tiny electric grill, but in the summer I really take advantage of all of the farm fresh meat and produce and I grill at least 4 times a week. (Stay tuned for grilling recipes). It's such a treat to be a stones throw from the farms which produce incredibly fresh ingredients. It's a chefs/cooks dream to have that level of quality on a daily basis.

The only downside to living upstate for a long period of time is the lack of accessibility to ethnic food. Upstate NY isn't the melting pot by a long shot. Good food that isn't American/Italian is few and far between, and unless you go to Albany there is little to no variety and what there is tends to miss some of those authentic ingredients. When I'm in the City I take for granted that I can have excellent food from every corner of the world all within a 20-30 minute drive at the furthest (and that's with traffic)...so for the past month I've been crazed trying to make sure I go to all of the ethnic restaurants for the food that I really can't get upstate.

Last month I tried Yak for the first time in my life. It tastes a lot like wild boar or maybe beef, and not nearly as foreign as the name would imply. A group of us went to Himalayan Yak in Queens for a taste of food that is part Nepali, part Indian and part Tibetan, an experience not to be missed. Above is a picture of Yak tongue, which tastes very much like beef strips. Some of the bread we ordered reminded me of Italian focaccia, other bread reminded me of Chinese Bao. Vegetables reminded me of Thai veggies, and the curries and some of the plate presentations were classic Indian. It was interesting to acknowledge that those "exotic" tastes, when given the chance to really analyze were actually pretty familiar, so therefore really not that foreign after all...however, all of these flavors are foreign to the Catskills, and that's what I'm now coming to terms with. Today I'm excited about leaving NYC next week for the peace and serenity of the mountains, but I'm also a little sad, because I know that experiences like the one that I had at "Yak" will not be repeated for quite awhile. It's so important for those of us who live in Metropolitan areas to open our palates and experience cuisine from different places because there are so many places in this country where that experience isn't possible.