• 19Dec

    boniatoThanksgiving is a while past, but I’m still reaping the rewards of my slightly warped culinary imagination. In the lead-up to All Glutton’s Eve, I pondered how to make my volunteered dish – mashed sweet potatoes – less generic and predictable. As usual the farmers market provided inspiration, this time in the form of cheaper-than-yams boniata.

    Boniato (plural -a) is a white-fleshed, pink-skinned tuber, common in Caribbean and Central American cuisines. Since I was cooking for people other than myself, I decided to make this dish for myself before the big day. Good choice!

    In my initial go, I thought it’d be fun to add some spice to the mash, and added jalapenos and a splash of cider vinegar: due to an underestimation of the available peppers’ strength, this turned out to be too hot for even me to eat. Luckily, it makes a fantastic alternative condiment in like fajitas or burritos. I also learned that boniata are gummier than ‘regular’ sweet potatoes, and a bit drier too.

    Deciding to tone this all down for a wider audience (who were probably less interested in garnish than starchy goodness), I made a couple more attempts before the final version, and ended up with a delicious one. Subtler in flavor than yellow sweet potatoes, and with a texture somewhere between the more common (orange) sweet potatoes and yucca, the boniato mash made a lovely addition to the Thanksgiving table. Leaving the skin on punctuates the dish with color and a little extra textural interest.

    What I used:

    6 boniata, well scrubbed
    2 jalapeno peppers (optional)
    2 cloves garlic (I wish I’d thought of roasting these, but it was good this way too)
    About 2 cups whole milk
    About 1/2 stick unsalted butter
    Salt
    White pepper
    Nutmeg

    What I did:

    Cut up the boniata and place immediately in a pot of lightly salted water (they start to discolor quickly in the air). Bring the water to a boil, then reduce heat to medium. Boil until boniata are tender enough to mash (about 10-15 minutes). While that’s going, chop up your spices and measure out your milk and butter.

    Now, drain the boniato and return them to the pot, mashing in the butter and then milk (adjust ammounts to your preferred consistency, but bear in mind: it gets gummier when cool!). Add a pinch of nutmeg, white pepper to taste (I used about 1/3 tsp), the peppers if you’re using them, and your garlic. Once that’s all mashed together, taste. Adjust seasonings as needed. Serve immediately.

    This mash will keep a good while in the fridge, but again, bear in mind: it does dry out more than orange sweet potato mash, and gets gummier when cold. Still, a delicious leftover lunch!

    – MAW

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  • 16Dec

    Patricia McNamee of Sweet Green was nice enough to share this recipe. Thanks Patricia!

    -JAY

    ———————

    Sweetgreen Xmas SaladSweetgreen’s Holiday Quinoa Salad


    Red & White Quinoa with balsamic roasted sweet potatoes, roasted beets & kale, dried

    cranberries, toasted almonds & chives.


    Salad Ingredients:

    1 cup red quinoa (rinsed)

    1 cup white quinoa (rinsed)

    1 large sweet potato, diced small

    1 large red beet, diced into cubes

    1 bunch Kale- flat leaf

    2 tablespoons of dried cranberries

    ½ cup toasted almonds

    Squeeze of fresh lemon

    Extra Virgin Olive oil

    1 cup balsamic vinegar

    Freshly chopped parsley or basil

    Garlic Salt

    Pepper to taste

    ½ pound of baby arugula or baby spinach

    Bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Add the rinsed quinoa.

    Lower heat to a simmer and let cook until the water is absorbed (about 15 minutes). About 5 minutes before it is done.

    Remove from the heat and fluff the quinoa with a fork. Allow Quinoa to cool in large separate bowl.

    Coat sweet potatoes and beets with balsamic vinegar and roast in oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Then add to quinoa mixture

    De-stem the kale and cut into ribbons ½ inch thick. Add to warm quinoa mixture. The heat from the quinoa will wilt the quinoa.

    Add cranberries, toasted almonds, parsely or basil. Give it a squeeze of fresh lemon, drizzle with a little olive oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

    Add garlic salt and pepper.

    You can either mix in a handful of baby arugula or spinach.

  • 14Dec

    Blue Bottle CafeIt’s well established that DCFüd likes coffee. In particular, we like good coffee, strong coffee, and entertaining methods of coffee production – preferably all together. It should come as no surprise, then, that during a recent visit to San Francisco, I spent more than a little time at the Blue Bottle Café, first on my hotel concierge’s recommendation, and then because it was good.

    Hidden in a courtyard which is not actually ‘on’ Mint Street, between Mission and Jessie Streets, it took me a few minutes to find the café. The space is bright and lively, with big tall windows and frankly awkward counter-in-the-middle seating. All the bubbling siphon pots make for a lovely science-lab feel I love. The menu, which changes regularly, is limited, especially since on my first visit they were out of eggs. At noon on a Saturday, this stuck me as especially poor form. The baristas were a mixed bag – but I won’t lie: the super attractive guy who gave me a free extra espresso shot in my au lait may have in fact been nicer than the girl who looked like she was chewing old lemons, but who can say?

    Lacking eggs, I ordered the a waffle and siphon pot of coffee. The coffee was good, but I hate that it’s served in tall thin glasses (see above). Pretty, yes, but not a good vessel from which to enjoy hot beverage. It’s possible that this inappropriate delivery contributed to my ambivalence about the coffee. The waffle was also very pretty, and good, but came ‘pre-dressed’ with powdered sugar, maple syrup, and too much butter for my taste. Prices are pretty standard for San Francisco – I paid $13.50 for this, the standard coffee is $2.30, and special iced coffees which I had on subsequent visits were $3.50. It’s all better than Starbucks.

    After breakfast, I decided to grab one of the Kyoto iced coffee things to go, since the cute barista said it was good and strong. It was both. Actually, it was phenomenal: super-strong, with a woody flavor like bourbon frozen over pure darkness. If I had any idea how to make this, I would never come down.

    On my next visit, I sat at the small section of counter facing the ‘kitchen,’ which was much more comfortable, and I got to watch the mayhem back there for added entertainment. I ordered the polenta. It was tasty, but I’m not sure what makes it ‘polenta’ instead of grits. The consistency was more pea soup than anything. The pancetta garnish is the delicious but rubbery, and there was not enough of it. My companion had the toast with jam. The jam was great, but the gorgeous-looking inch-thick toast is pretty much just white bread. In the end, everything does come back to the coffee: my au lait is stellar. The second was even better, since that’s where the extra espresso shot went.

    All in all, Blue Bottle Café is a good place to grab a coffee to go (especially the Kyoto one), or maybe to have a very quick sit-down bite. Or to meet a blind date. Actually, this is a great blind-date location: the seating is not comfortable enough for too much lingering – you have ample excuse to bail out quickly or to suggest a more intimate venue, should you be so lucky. Plus, the coffee is good and the food passable and not so heavy you’ll worry about looking a pig.

    And yes, I lied in the first paragraph. I didn’t actually spend much time in the Blue Bottle Café, but rather drinking beverages from it.

    Blue Bottle Café
    66 Mint St.,
    San Francisco, CA, 94103

    MAW

  • 07Dec

    This review was written by DCFüd contributors Liz G. and Carl T. – MAW


    As part of the ongoing yuppification of Mt. Vernon Triangle, Taylor Gourmet has opened up a new storefront in the City Vista building, next door to the newest Busboys & Poets and around the corner from the Urban Lifestyle Safeway. Taylor draws its inspiration from the hoagies* served in Philly — and trucks in its bread every day from the City of Brotherly Love.Taylor

    Taylor’s menu divides its hoagies into three categories: specialties, cold cut hoagies, and chicken cutlets. We sampled a few of the offerings at a recent visit.

    We were very impressed that they are the first place either of us has seen to offer Boylan’s soda on tap. Boylan’s sodas are sweetened with cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which should delight those of you who can taste the difference. (My med school biochem professor almost goes into an apoplectic fit when he rails about the corn lobby’s “evilness” and how HFCS will give you diabetes and make you fat, so I defer to his professional judgment on that topic.) We had the ginger ale, which our tasting notes indicate was “nice and gingery, but not overpowering.”

    The Callowhill Street comes from the “Specialties” menu and has meatballs dressed with marinara and provolone. Some might call this a meatball grinder. It’s a good way of testing out a sub shop, because a careless joint can easily screw it up with soggy bread, watery sauce, or bland meatballs. The meatballs in the Callowhill were peppery (maybe a little too peppery) but balanced overall. The bread stood up well to the marinara sauce, remaining crisp and firm even after it patiently waited for us to photograph it. We were a bit disappointed at the parsimonious serving of provolone — instead of being melted over the sauce, there were just a handful of small flakes dusted on top. Other than that, though, it was a tasty example of the genre.

    The Delaware Avenue is a fried chicken cutlet with roasted red peppers, red onion, and Gorgonzola. The cutlet was pressed flat and nicely fried, with a good crunchy exterior. The onions dominated the flavor of the sandwich. We appreciated the Gorgonzola crumbles, and there were some nice textures, but we agreed the sandwich felt under-seasoned.

    Overall, we were pleased with the food, but are torn. The place feels hipper and more daring than its menu suggests. The sandwiches we’ve had have been very respectable, but nothing surprised us or was completely out of the park. We want desperately to like the place more. And we don’t dislike it — we do plan to go back and try more sandwiches. Perhaps we just haven’t found the grinder which fits our personalities perfectly?

    Taylor adds a much-needed almost-fast-food option in the neighborhood which seems to be populated exclusively by higher end restaurants. Not that we’re complaining, but when Zaytinya is your most relaxed dining option you sometimes yearn for a place you could comfortably run to in your sweats. (If you had sweats. Which I’m sure you don’t. I don’t.) It has a great garage-front for its street side, which opens all the way in good weather, and lends the place a pleasing cafe air. It’s decorated in what might be called hipster mechanic shop, with cement walls and floors, and 55-gallon oil drums serving as chandeliers. The background music is gently pulsing and pretty chill; if you close your eyes, you could be forgiven for thinking you were inside a West Elm store.**

    Finally, one of us can’t write a review without doing a bathroom viewing as well. They’ve extended the industrial-chic look to the ladies room as well.

    Taylor Gourmet
    1116 H Street Northeast,
    Washington, DC
    (202) 684-7001

    *One of us spent most of his adult life in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and has great difficulty calling these sandwiches “hoagies” rather than “grinders.” Still, it’s probably a lesser offense than using the New York term “heros,” and less puzzling than the St. Louis variant, “poor boy.” See Wikipedia for further explication.

    **Whether you count that a plus or not is up to you.

  • 03Dec

    The good news is, some of us are over-employed (that’s good, right?). Some of us have even moved away from the DC area *gasp* to go to graduate school.
    But the bad news is a dry spell for the FUD at the moment. So, to
    counteract this terrible state of affairs, we are looking for…..

    A FEW NEW WRITERS!!
    Were you annoyed by a restaurant?
    Do you have some random recipes to share?
    Have you discovered the best wine or restaurant in DC?
    Do you want to write a comparison article for a particular item or dish?
    Need some hipster cred? Good, since that is how we are compensated. 🙂
    Then we want you for DCFUD. Send any sort of writing sample to
    jay@dcfud.com, along with a couple ideas you’d like to write
    about. It’ll be crazy!

    Permalink Filed under: Etc No Comments
  • 01Dec

    Eating Thanksgiving dinner – the turkey, et al – I got to thinking, “Is the foodie movement dead?”  Granted, we have seen incredible advancements in the food industry over the past 50 years.  At that same Thanksgiving dinner, my mother ordered raw tuna with sushi rice.  Would this have happened 30 years ago in suburban Pennsylvania?  Never (unless you were an immigrant from Japan, perhaps).  But what is there that has the power to WOW us today?  How can something be cooked different than it already is?  I think the foodie movement is dead – or at least gasping for a breath.

    Our global interconnectedness has brought us things young school children only dreamed about years ago.  One of the best restaurants in D.C. serves goat, for the love of god – and people flock to eat it!  We eat sushi when we want.  Visit Ethiopia via U Street or Silver Spring.  Kabobs are on street corners, and Cincinnati chili can be eaten in a strip mall.  Anything and everything those children imagined is now available on our virtual doorstep.

    And we’ve tasted all these foods prepared in diverse and questionable ways.  We’ve deconstructed Caesar salads down to a foam.   Whiskeys are now being infused with toasted marshmallows.  And pears are being crossed with plums and grown in the shape of Buddha!  Where else can we go?  You can only sauté, boil, butter, roast, stir-fry, and bake so many things in so many ways.  Only so many foods can be whipped into a foam or reduced to a powder.  Liquid nitrogen is riding on the water skis with Fonzi.  Perhaps, in the end, we’ve come full circle.

    We now go out and order meatloaf.  We go gaga when tater tots are on the menu.  Macaroni cheese has popped up in the finest of restaurants.  Are we returning to the 1950s?  Have we eaten so many new and exotic cuisines that we now demand the comforts of home, the delicacies that still reign supreme in Ohio, the recipes of Betty Crocker?  I wouldn’t go so far.  But I do think, with so many choices, that we’ve become tired of the exotic and the new.  My mother eats sushi for Thanksgiving because she’d never eaten it until five years ago.  You and I grew up with it.  It’s normal.  We’re immune to the insane.

    So where do we go from here?  Unexpected combinations of food?  Fire-roasted cherry and peanut balls?  Anything is possible.  And don’t get me wrong, I love everything that’s going on in the foodie world.  I just wonder how much farther we can push it.  Good, fresh ingredients cooked to perfection, absent the molecular dressings, can entice even the pickiest of eaters.  Let us look to the future boldly and without fear.  A new trend is bound to arise, a new food discovered, and new cooking technique perfected.  And we’ll all be there, hoping for a bite or a sip, confident that while the foodie movement may be ailing, we know our own adventurous spirit will never die.

    AEK

  • 29Nov

    lI was on San Francisco for a work trip, and was not about to let the grueling conference schedule interfere with my penchant for finding random weird people at a happy hour someplace not a hotel bar. As usual, some obliging randoms (hi Juan, Mai, and JJ, if you’re reading this!) entertained me at a recommended bar (Vesuvio) one evening during my stay. Sadly, they’d been drinking all day and were ready for bed by about 10PM, leaving me to realize that I had not had anything but bar snacks for dinner, and was actually pretty hungry.

    So I wandered back towards my hotel, keeping an eye out for food. Being slightly tipsy and more than a little indecisive, I ended up steps from my hotel before realizing that I was still, in fact, hungry (and slightly tipsy). There I came across Cocobang. It’s near the hotel (a bad sign), but was full of people, including ones speaking Korean, drinking and eating and looking like they were having a good time (a good sign); anyways San Francisco is known for great food of the Asian variety, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

    I went in to the dark restaurant and was greeted by cheesy techno and a friendly host, who sat me in a corner where I could observe the whole scene. May I mention how much I love California’s smoking ban? In Atlanta, this place would have been full of cheap cigarette smoke. My server brought me tea (in a plastic cup), a menu, and asked if I’d been there before. I told him no, but that I loved Korean food and wanted to try his favorite dish on the menu. I don’t think he believed me, and tried to steer me towards the fried chicken wings which, on the next table, looked OK, but not at all like what I wanted.

    Again emphasizing that I wanted the regular version (as opposed to the for-whiteys version), I ordered the spicy beef short rib BBQ plate, because it smelled really good from the table on the other side of me from the chicken. I was loving the hilarious music videos being played on the giant TV over a bar that looks more like someone’s office than a place to set drinks (papers are piled high on top), and only nearly stopped myself from adding a soju cocktail to my order. But, I had to be up for work in the morning!

    My food came out: slices of beef in a neon red sauce. My server again looked incredulous when I told him that I didn’t need a fork and knife (I’d been glancing now and again at my neighbors, ensuring I had the proper technique in mind). Since the ribs were bone-in, and you really just had to gnaw the meat off the bones, it was messy and a bit of a challenge, but food’s more fun when you earn it!

    It was tasty, but not the best I’ve ever had. The sauce was nice – not much oil in it, letting the fat from the beef take care of that texture – and while not as spicy as I’d have liked (mine was clearly not as spicy (by smell alone) as the one next to me), it was not too sweet and still had good flavors. The accompanying kimchee, pickled soybeans, and radish were good too. I finished my meal, happily sated but not stuffed at all (the portion was really just right for me). I sipped tea and water, watched the really drunk patrons (most of the others there) and giggled at the videos.

    All told, Cocobang is not the kind of place I’d go out of my way for, but as far as tourist-district restaurants go, it was tasty, pretty cheap ($15 plus tax etc.), and open very late. If I was in town on vacation and staying near Union Square (OK, that’s not likely, but whatever), I’d probably end up there for end-of-night munchies.

    Cocobang
    550 Taylor St
    San Francisco, CA 94102
    (415) 292-5144

    -MAW

  • 26Nov

    Summer’s been over a while, and my food habits had gotten lazy. I needed a jolt: some dish that could pull me back to caring about food enough to spend the time to cook it. Discovering YDFM‘s bloody fabulous unpasteurized Parmesan was a good start, but it mostly just lead to Alfredo comas and suspicious decisions involving grits. Fall, it seems, was wasted on me. paulaner-oktoberfest

    But then came October and, better yet, Oktoberfest. Having drunk myself…drunk…all month, I ended up finding myself with a couple leftover bottles of Paulaner’s delightful seasonal. For reasons best left to everyone’s imaginations (quiet, you!), I realized they’d probably not get consumed in time, so I decided to try something a bit strange with some veggies, also nearly past due: I braised them. In beer. And put Parmesan on top. It’s like a very, very bougie ratatouille, and was bloody delicious, and easy, and a nice way to slide out of fall. I plan to keep on making until I get sick of it, which may be never. And it’ll be a great accompaniment to my Thanksgiving spread.

    Here’s the stuff:

    Preheat your oven to 350 while you chop.

    Fresh fennel, washed and cut into big bits (quarter the bulbs, etc)
    Yellow onion, similarly cut
    A couple handfuls diced carrot
    A couple handfuls diced red bell pepper

    And prep:
    Kosher salt
    Black pepper
    Enough Paulaner Oktoberfest to cover the rest
    Parmesan cheese (unpasteurized, though you could use pasteurized too, as long as it’s not from a green cylinder)

    Put everything except the cheese into a baking dish, and bake, uncovered, for about 15 minutes (less if the beer is not cold). After that time, take the dish out of the oven, stir things around, and sprinkle some cheese over top of the veggies. Now crank up the oven up to 400 and put the dish back in for 8-10 minutes, until the veggies are cooked. If you’ve used the right amount of beer, the cheese will get all nice and melty and brown, but if you’ve used too much, it’ll just melt into the liquid, which isn’t as elegant but may also be very tasty.

    Eat, preferably accompanied by the rest of that giant bloody beer you opened.

    Bonus: sopping up the clearly excessive quantities of braising liquid with hearty Bavarian rye bread. For dessert. Or breakfast. Possibly with all that leftover turkey.

    -MAW

  • 24Nov

    This article is by (Guest Blogger) Culinary Historian Michael Twitty of Afrofoodways.  I met him a few years ago at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, where he had an exhibit.   I have been bugging him to write an article for a couple of years now.  I expected a recipe with background story that tied his African American culture with his (adopted) Jewish faith..which this is not.  It’s a helluva read.  Thanks Michael.

    -JAY

    —————————–

    twit_frontI am not big on Thanksgiving.  I can’t stand the set menu.  It doesn’t mean much to me.  Sure, I love a brined breast or fried turkey leg as much as the next nouveau gourmet addicted to food porn and Paula Deen; but its okay—nothing special.  Besides, according to my adopted faith I’m supposed to eat a button-bursting meal the next day for the Sabbath.  Commercials with disgusting green bean casserole with those canned onion ring things sucked up by thuggin’ evergreens that take a bite and go all a flutter with Christmas queer?  Cranberry sauce from a can? Really? Cranberries hand-picked by Martha Stewart with a friggin’ 19th century cran-cradle and lovingly stewed into something that looks like the insides of road kill? Goyishe naches!

    I am not snarky. I’m actually the kind of metaphysical-spiritual-earthy-wispy food fairy that makes Anthony Bourdain want to go postal.  I am just annoyed that good food in American culture is symbolized by a meal the Pilgrims didn’t even eat.  It’s a holiday built on food fakelore and myths meant to re-connect North with South, immigrant with native, and 19th century Manifest Destiny with 17th century Gold, God and Glory. During the one pleasant memory I have of the holiday—the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade–my militant high-yellow grandmother used to remind me every year, “See them marching down Fifth Avenue; the Dutch ripped the Indians off for 24 bucks! Shame! Shame! The Indians should have put glass in the Pilgrim’s food—would have saved them some trouble!”  Grandma was multicultural when multicultural wasn’t cool.  Ripe with symbolism and cultural myths that have nothing to do with me and my people(s); and a menu that makes me want to regurgitate, I never liked Thanksgiving.  Maybe it never liked me.

    But I guess I’m Frank Capra enough to admit that Thanksgiving isn’t about the idol of Norman Rockwell’s images of tables of plenty.  It’s about the family and the friends and the connections between each other.  If you have a house to go to, and a table to sit around and food on the table to eat—you give thanks.  Thanks to God or the animals and plants that gave it up, or Mom for making it, or each other for being there, or gratitude for making it in traffic.  This isn’t about me and my cultural angst towards the blanket mandated closing of America and the earliest retail day of the year that follows it.  This is about being thankful and all that this means to us.

    It’s been a hard year.  I have to admit I’m poor like never before thanks to Ms. Recession. It sucks for most of us out here.  And yet I feel more connected to the past I study—the world of enslaved men and women—and their sharecropper kids.  I’m thankful that I have a precedent to rely on.  Stories of “wishmeat” sandwiches and great-grandparents who drank eight glasses of water while eight hungry kids sat around a table devouring a pot of beans with cornbread down to the last drop and crumb.  Without those weekly fasts, I might not be here.  I am thankful for a system of survival meant for times like these.

    This year I was fortunate to curate and cultivate a 19th century kitchen garden at the Montgomery County Historical Society. I’m grateful for the sixty-one different types of plants we grew there…many of which I got to taste and cook.  Collards and cabbages, carrots, parsnips, salsify, celery, parsley, lettuce, potatoes, onions, turnips and turnip greens, okra, heirloom tomatoes, peppers hot and sweet, sweet potatoes, corn, pattypan squash, green beans, lima beans, black eyed and other field peas, peanuts, nasturtiums, pumpkins, muskmelons, basil, oregano, marjoram, sage, mint, thyme, rosemary came from the giving earth.  Each sprout, each flowering, each fruiting made my hand tremble.  I was partner with the earth and not its enemy to make my food come alive.  Green glaze collards sliced up with red onions and streaked fish peppers and garlic and olive oil and chicken stock over Carolina Gold rice plated with edible nasturtiums in reddish orange, pinkish yellow and sunburst amber blossoms.  Wow! Thanks, isn’t the word.  Reverence comes closer.

    I’m thankful that my Mother is still here to teach me what real food should taste like and the secrets of our brand of Southern cooking—courtesy of southern Ohio by way of Alabama by way of Virginia and the Carolinas by way of Africa, England and the villages of my Creek ancestors.  I chatted her up about shelling bags of crowder peas on the stoop, footlong (“Were they really?) Kentucky Wonder beans, about men selling sugarcane and watermelons from the backs of trucks, grilling pork chops over hot charcoal and chicken wire; and tea cakes—a fluffy Southern adaptation of English tea biscuits that every Black woman in my grandmother’s generation had a recipe for.  I’m thankful she still tests me—how does a fresh potato roll keep from getting soggy?  How do you know skirt steak gravy is ready to come together?  How do you clean a collard properly?

    I give thanks for being able to give back.  It’s giving kids just learning the joy of growing their own food, heirloom seeds and lessons in Black food history at the Washington Youth Garden.  It’s being aware that a homeless person took a couple of healthy bites from the corners of the historical garden.  It’s hands of bananas and cans of tuna to the men and women who advertise their hunger on Rockville Pike.  Thankfulness is taking my 91 year old Grandfather from South Carolina to the Obama inauguration and stuffing him with fried chicken and in his words, “a hot samm’ich” after walking him back “a country mile” to the Imani temple where his van was docked.  Being thankful is appreciating being able to have places to write for.

    -Michael Twitty

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  • 24Nov

    Washingtonian tagged us here in their recent article about using Thanksgiving leftovers.  I gave a bunch of ideas, and this was the one they asked me for additional information about.  They tagged about a dozen local food bloggers.

    -JAY

    Washingtonian_logoTired of Pumpkin Pie Yet?

    • Jason, DCFud.com

    Cranberry Parfait

    “I like to use my homemade cranberry sauce as a topping on vanilla or chocolate ice cream. If you want to bring it to the next level, make a parfait out of it with yogurt and granola or crushed cookies. Gingersnaps, lemon cookies, oatmeal cookies, or even cubed pound cake will work. Layer the vanilla yogurt, cranberry sauce, and your granola or crushed cookies. Make two layers of each ingredient. Serve the parfaits in something glass, like a large wine goblet, so you can see the layers.””

    In my communications with them, I had actually included this cranberry sauce recipe as well:

    * Boil 1 cup of water with 1 cup sugar, and stir until sugar is dissolved.

    * Reduce heat to medium.

    * Add one bag of cranberries (12 ounces) and cook it for about ten minutes, until the berries pop.

    * You can then add 1/2 to 3/4 of a teaspoon of freshly grated orange or lemon zest.

    A variation that I enjoy is to add two chopped pears to the hot dissolved water/sugar for 3 minutes and then add the berries until they pop.


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