Ingredients

• Feeds 4-6 people
• Ingredients:
• 1/4 cup peeled and chopped garlic
• 4 peeled and chopped shallots
• 4 ounces olive oil
• 1 pound mixed wild mushrooms
• 1 cup cognac
• 2 cups dry white wine
• 32 ounces chicken stock
• 1 cup of roasted tomatoes
• 1 cup chopped tomatoes
• 1 bunch Tarragon
• 1 bunch chives
• 4 ounces heavy cream
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 4 (1 pound) lobsters
• 1 pounds 16/20 peeled and deveined shrimp
• 1.5 pounds pasta of your choice

Method

• sweat shallots and garlic in olive oil until translucent.
• add mushrooms and cook until tender
• add cognac and wine to the mixture and simmer for 5-7 minutes.
• add chicken stock, tarragon leaves and all tomato products and bring to a boil.
• place live lobster, one at a time in your sauce and cook the lobsters for 3-4 minutes each.
• remove the lobsters and let them cool and remove the meat from the shells.
• once you have cooked the lobsters, add cream, salt and pepper to your sauce and you are ready to go.

Yummy sauce!

• in a separate sauté pan,sauté the raw shrimp and lobster very quickly.
• cook your pasta in salted boiling water until al dente.
• you can mix everything together and serve or you can place the sauce, the lobster and shrimp and the pasta all in separate serving dishes and let your guests make their own dish.
• *note- if you are serving the pasta plain, coat the pasta with a touch of olive oil….
• Serve with roasted bread and a delicious crisp dry white or crisp dry Rose.

Salt-Lick

Sunday night we decided to sit at the bar at a restaurant we have frequented over the years on the Upper West Side.
I don't like to write negative things about restaurants, because I do not like it when my restaurants are not written in a positive way. (I take it very personally!)
That said, I am only going to say that this joint is in the 70's between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues and it has the writing on the wall, DOA....

The place has been popular for years and I have always felt like the design was similar to a restaurant you would find at The Paramus Park Mall in Jersey, (sorry Jersey peeps).

We had not eaten all day and were ready for a great meal.

We ordered fried cauliflower, proscuitto and cheese fritters and crostini.

The Cauliflower was over fried and over salted. The Balls were over salted and the inside of the balls was still raw. The crostini looks beautiful and it was just placed in front of us. No one told us what each one was. The Tuna crostini was brown and on the cusp of being rancid. Each one we had to dissect to figure out what the ingredients were.

Thus far, our only high point was the two bartenders behind the bar. They were sweet, helpful and looked good.

We sat very close to where the waiters picked up their drinks from the bartenders. Every single waiter and waitress looked as if they were up drinking till 5am, wore the same uniform as they had for the entire week and were bored to tears.

Our next course was pasta and their famous meat sauce that tasted like sugar and salt. (Its just not that hard to make a great tomato sauce..... All you need is love, time and fresh ingredients....

Our meal was $122 with the tip and the moral of the story is that a restaurant is only as good as its last meal. Same goes for real estate, we are only as good as how we perform with each of our customers and anyone in a service industry should always have that on their mind-
If you don't have this ingrained in your head, you will be DOA, Dead on Arrival!

CZ and PZ at Raos! We work hard and play hard!

Mrs. Z and I were interviewed on  MarriedMillions.com, it is a pretty darn good interview, if I say so myself.....

They believe that “One Couple’s Success, Is Another Couple’s Education.”

The best place to get that education is from the couples themselves. Their careers and companies cover a wide range of disciplines. Listen to them and other experts who all have real life lessons for every business.

Carolyn and Paul Zweben

Carolyn Zweben, a Senior Vice President, truly has an eye for real estate. She developed her skills while working as an art consultant and appraiser for such notable concerns as the Guggenheim Museum, the Michael Ingbar Gallery in Soho, and at Eppraisals.com. Those ten years in the art field taught her the importance of staying in touch with her clientele, and being current with the statistics of the residential market. While her focus has primarily been the Upper West Side, (Carolyn lives with her husband, a well-known restaurateur, in a turn of the century Riverside Drive coop,) she has also provided exceptional service throughout Chelsea and other areas of the city.......Senior Vice President, Paul Zweben brings a freshness and energy to New York City real estate that makes working with him and the Zweben Group a pleasure for both buyers and sellers alike. In order for brokers to be successful in this new market, they must be extremely responsive and attentive to their sellers and buyers, qualities that come naturally to Paul. A true New Yorker, he thrives on being in the center of it all, as both a real estate maven and restaurateur, knowing the newest up-and-coming neighborhoods as well as where to dine there. In 1993 Paul formed a restaurant partnership and is an integral part of such quintessential NY hot spots as BLT Prime in Gramercy Park and Calle Ocho on the Upper West Side.....They have a  private label wine that is produced from a vineyard that we invested in Mendoza Argentina called Algodin Vineyards and have a Buenos Aires hotel where they are part owners.

Listen to the podcast:

http://web.me.com/sleccima/Power_Couples_Podcasts/MarriedMillions.com/Entries/2010/10/8_Entry_1_files/Carolyn%20and%20Paul%20Zweben.mp3