Highline Park, followed by tapas at Tia Pol

The Highline Park in the Meatpacking District is the ultimate upcycled project.

It used to be a set of railroad tracks for freight trains, which, in 1934, were raised thirty feet above ground to minimise street-level collisions. No trains have been running on those tracks since 1980, and it was eventually decided to preserve this historical structure in some way. In April 2006 construction began to convert The Highline into a public park, and it opened to the public in June this year.

I saw it for myself the first time last night, and went with my friends Boo and Blue. We thought it would be a lovely thing to do before sharing some tapas in a local restaurant. I was the first to arrive, so took a couple of photos of the entrance on Gansevoort Street:

We strolled along the concrete slabs admiring the beautiful flora, which was a variety of young trees, bushy weeds and sunny wild flowers. Every so often the original train tracks peeped through the foliage:

Near these old tracks are some very smart wooden recliners and benches, upon which people were happily lounging in the sunset. Blue joked that we must be in Bali or something!

Right now the park only runs as far north as 20th Street, and ¡jolín! those 6 blocks went by fast. Still, it was time to eat...

A few blocks north on 10th Avenue is Tia Pol, the tapas bar that I had picked from several Spanish options in the area. I chose it because the tapas menu had classic dishes, was reasonably priced, and didn't seem stuffy.

The word tapas comes from the verb tapar in Spanish, which means 'to cover': originally slices of bread or ham which were used to cover one's sherry glass to keep flies out, nowadays tapas are little bites of food served at bars. Some of my favourite tapas are to be had in one of the many bars in my mother's village in Andalucía, and the ones I had at Tia Pol were just as good.

We shared some tortilla (potato omelette), patatas bravas (roast potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce), paquititos de jamón con alcachofa (Manchego cheese and artichokes wrapped in Serrano ham), brandada (like a Spanish fish pie), and piquillos rellenos de ensaladilla rusa (roasted peppers stuffed with potato salad and tuna fish). It was all delicious.

The menu and wine list are small, but precise - I wasn't familiar with most of the wine options but was pleased with my choice, a white Monterrei from Galicia. The presentation was confidently rustic - there no fussy arrangement to disguise compromised flavours, like other Spanish restaurants I've tried in this town... 

The vibe is busy, but not rushed - Boo, Blue and I sat at the bar for several hours, talking, eating, drinking. It wasn't authentic in a traditional sense: tapas bars in Spain don't have menus (daily offerings are on display at the bar) and they do have cigarette machines and the woody carcasses of pipas (sunflower seeds) on the floor... Instead, Tia Pol reminded me of a young, hip tapas bar you might find in Madrid.

I've found my little taste of Spain in New York.

• Highline Park
• Tia Pol

One Pot Cooking: Roast Chicken

Andalucía, Spain's largest and most southern region, is one of the main places I grew up. My English mother and Belgian step-father live in a typical white Spanish village, whose surrounding hills are abloom with all sorts of flora, including wild thyme.

When I lived in London, I could bring some home with me, wrapped tightly in a plastic supermarket bag to keep it fresh for as long as possible. Now that I live in the US, international wildlife restrictions apply, so I have to buy my cultivated thyme in a supermarket these days.

I love this roast chicken recipe for its Mediterranean influence of flavours. I usually make it with thyme to remind me of home, but you could also use rosemary. Use the whole sprig of the fresh herbs - if you pull the leaves off first your mouth will end up with annoying bits. Or, as in the case of rosemary, little woody needles!

Although my mother cooks instinctively (she declares she's never made the same recipe twice) she must be credited with the following roast chicken recipe; not one to waste a single scrap of food, the idea to make a stock out of the carcass is my step-father's.


Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken, giblets removed, rinsed under kitchen tap
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 2 potatoes, peeled and sliced into discs about 0.5" thick
• 6 carrots or other root vegetables, e.g. parsnips, sliced into 1" lengths (and, in the case of parsnips 0.5" thick)
• Sprig of fresh herbs, e.g. thyme, rosemary
• 1 unwaxed lemon, scrubbed and then cut into half
• Glug of liquid - it doesn't matter whether it's beer, wine, orange juice or something else
  

Place the chicken into a 2" deep baking dish and drizzle olive oil over it, rubbing it into all the creases. Season with salt and pepper.

Surround it with the onions, potatoes and vegetables. Season with salt and pepper.

Add fresh herbs and lemon.
Herbs: on the chicken, at either end, and stuff some into the chicken too;
Lemon: squeeze the juice all over the chicken and veggies, and stuff the chicken with the two halves

Drizzle more oil over everything, and then add the liquid - just a glug. The oil and liquid combine with the chicken juices to form a gravy!

Mix the veggies around to coat them too

Bung in the oven for 75-90mins at 220°C (425°F) - every oven is different, so you may have to adjust temp/ time. You'll know when the chicken is done because you should be able to pull off a leg easily.

Serve and enjoy!

Frugalista Tip:

• When the chicken is nothing but a carcass, you can make it into a stock for soups and other dishes - fry celery, carrots and onion with salt, pepper and herbs in a cooking pot, and then add chicken carcass - the whole thing. Add water, bring to a boil and simmer for a few hours. Strain, and refrigerate when cool until chilled, whereupon you may skim off the fat if you are so inclined. Ta-da!

Leandro Erlich's Swimming Pool

In April 2009 I found myself underwater but dry as a bone: Swimming Pool is an ingenious two-level interactive art installation from Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich.

From the upper level, a smart wooden deck, it looks like a normal swimming pool - that is, until you spot someone walking, not bobbing, around on the pool floor. You might marvel at this optical illusion a while before curiosity gets the better of you - once you've descended the wooden steps into the room below you see that Erlich has carved out an empty swimming pool, with blue paint, lights and ladder, and whose ceiling is super-duper strong acrylic which supports a few inches of water. The only thing missing is the smell of chlorine.

I was with a few people, including a 5-year old boy who zoomed around the pool floor pretending to be a fish, an octopus, a ship, a pirate... For once, we didn't need to see something through the eyes of a child to appreciate its novelty, charm and magic, but having a kid with us was a great excuse to linger a little longer as we played at hydronauts.

My friend, Boo, took this picture of me pretending to be a mermaid. I hadn't experienced such underwater wonder since I took my first underwater breath learning to SCUBA dive back in '96. So, go! It's on view at P.S.1 in Queens until October 24, 2009.

(And for those of you who can't get to NYC in time, you might enjoy this Build Your Own Swimming Pool link!)

A Native American Folktale about Dogs

The second time I lived in New York was back in 2002-2003. I entered the country on a J-1 visa (a/k/a "The Internship Visa") which gives the holder permission to be in the U.S. for 19 months and work for 18 of those months.

Knowing that my time then in NYC was temporary, I collected all sorts of scrapbook paraphernalia - business cards of restaurants and bars I frequented, photos, maps, stickers, flyers, theatre tickets... These were the days before Facebook, after all!

But one pasted piece of paper is rather incongruous nowadays: it's not related to my being in NYC, nor is there a note to say where I found it, and yet I glued it into my scrapbook for some reason other than just because I stumbled upon it whilst I was in NYC. It's a Native American folktale, a simple and beautiful fable about the bond shared between humans and our dogs.

The earth trembled and a great rift appeared, separating the first man and woman from the rest of the animal kingdom. As the chasm grew deeper and wider, all the other creatures, afraid for their lives, returned to the forest - except for the dog, who after much consideration leapt the perilous rift to stay with the humans on the other side. His love for humanity was greater than his bond to other creatures, he explained and he willingly forfeited his place in paradise to prove it.