We were dreaming all morning of Vanilla Panna Cotta, but we had to have our main healthy dish first.
If you’re interested in eating a healthy lunch from a food truck, Now Eat This!is a good option. All menu items are supposed to be under 350 calories, and are based on recipes from a cookbook of the same name by Rocco Di Spirito.
Similar to his UK colleague Jamie Oliver, Rocco is on a mssion to teach people, especially children, how to cook and eat healthily. One of the first things they teach is that food can be delicious and healthy – these two things are not mutually exclusive.
I’ve tried a few things from the Now Eat This! truck since it first came out last November, ranging from excellent (chicken broccoli stir fry) to ok (lasagna bolognese).
With a few new items on the menu, it was time for a return trip for the chicken satay ($9) and vanilla panna cotta with a caramel sauce ($3) for dessert.
Either the handwritten menuwas marked wrong or someone can’t add, but I was charged $11 for lunch instead of $12. I don’t know if that’s a promising start or not, but I’ll take it.
In Asian restaurants, chicken (or beef) satay is usually an appetizer with a few thin, grilled strips of meat on skewers, a thick peanut sauce and a vinegary, syrupy sauce with cucumbers and onions. This dish was similar in some respects and different in others.
There were 3 skewers with grilled chicken, but they were far from thin. These were among the meatiest chicken satay skewers I’ve had. The white-meat chicken was nicely grilled and quite thick, with the thickness helping keep in the juices. Three of these skewers was a substantial lunch.
The sauce did not taste like a peanut sauce. There might have been some peanuts in the sauce, but it actually reminded me of a tangy, creamy Italian dressing, but spicier. The skewers were laid on top of a large salad with lots of iceberg lettuce, half a dozen cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices and peanut pieces. Some of the dressing from the chicken satay was also used as dressing, but our mind was already dreaming of the Vanilla Panna Cotta.
After finishing lunch, I didn’t really need dessert, but the vanilla panna cotta with caramel sauce was already deeply ingrained in my mind. The caramel sauce on top had that burnt caramel taste, which I mean as a compliment. It wasn’t a sugary sweet caramel sauce, there was some depth.
Under the caramel sauce, vanilla bean was quite visibly speckled throughout the panna cotta, which was cool and creamy. This was a tasty dessert, especially the bites with both panna cotta and caramel sauce.
You can find Now Eat This! on twitter here or on our Mobile Munchies twitter feed. They hit various neighborhoods in Manhattan Mon-Thurs. Every Friday, they go to a different NYC-area school to teach kids how to cook and eat healthy food, then come into Manhattan for lunch. Now that’s a worthy cause.
