FORAGING FRIDAY: BLACK RICE & FOOD GRAFFITI

Foraging Friday documents Kitchen Toro's exploration of New York's diverse restaurants, neighborhoods, stores and their ingredients and flavors.

I'm obligated to tell you about my search for black rice. It's an integral component to my first dessert dish for my final project: Thai Iced Tea Ice Cream with Coconut Sticky Black Rice. I want to use black rice purely for the color contrast to the ice cream and the fried banana which will accompany it. Now I'm sure this is enough to entice you in and of itself, but I promise that if you visit the jump you'll find something quirky enough to merit bonus points at the end of the post.

I tried my two closest Greenpoint supermarkets, Key and what I affectionately call, "Garden-Flower-Beautiful," a small specialty grocery with some higher-end products on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, but neither place had the black rice.

Tops, a few blocks from the Bedford Avenue L in Williamsburg was also somewhat surprisingly a bust. I had to go to Whole Foods in New York City's food mecca, Union Square to find my black, "Forbidden Rice." I was also able to find goat milk for my goat milk ricotta and mozzarella manicotti dish.

Even though finding the black rice was a relief it wasn't as fun a part of Foraging Friday as the second part of today's feature, food graffiti. I was rushed so I didn't have time to stop and investigate but I noticed something strange on the brick wall near my apartment that I'd never seen before. Look on the wall at right behind the man walking stage-left, talking on his cellphone and trying to avoid being part of my picture (yeah, buddy, it's you I'm trying to take a picture of).

Now don't tell me this says "E66YOLK," or "Eggy olk," it's "Egg Yolk," plain as day and I have no idea who tagged the Polish restaurant at the end of my block with this graffiti but I swear, it wasn't me. Maybe whoever tagged the wall, (I think his name is Egg Yolk Myers, actually) is just doing some October planning, trying to tell people to target this restaurant with rotten eggs on Halloween because they had just as horrible an experience eating there as I did.