• 29Jul

    tvfn star

    The LA Times has a good article on last week’s episode of “The Next Food Network Star.”  The finale is Sunday at 9pm, where we will learn whether it is Jeffrey or Mellisa who will become a TV Food Network Host.

    I’ve been following this season closely, especially since I actually tried out for it.  I was sitting in Rosslyn all day on a work day, vibing with prospective contestants and waiting my turn.  It was actually a lot of fun, but I can’t quite remember why I told them the ingredient that most represents me is a pineapple.  🙂

    I personally think that Debbie Lee’s personality did her in, because (after seeing negative behavior from her in a couple of episodes) I believe that in an actual audience vote vs. anyone, she would lose.  The judges have to consider possible audience response to the contestants, and one judge (Bob Tuschman) seems particularly peeved by her antics.

    My Take:  I like Jeffrey Saad’s culinary perspective, and Melissa d’Arabian’s energy and enthusiasm.  If asked which one I’d like to have a dinner with…I’d choose Melissa, and if asked which one I’d like to cook dinner with…I’d select Jeffrey.  I’m leaning towards Melissa for the win, but would be happy with either of them as the next TV Food Network Star.

    -JAY

  • 21Jul

    Mamey1
    Before they appeared at my farmer’s market recently, I’d never seen a mamey in the US. Having had (and loved) them in other places, of course I had to buy one and see what I could make of it.

    The times I’ve had mamey before it was usually in or on ice cream, or part of some elaborate fruit plate concoction. I had no intention of attempting to make ice cream, and I didn’t have any at home either. A fruit concoction was tempting, but living alone I knew that would lead to too much leftover growing tasteless in the fridge. And, it being Tuesday, an impromptu dinner party was unlikely. So it was to be a single-serving affair.

    For those who’ve never had this amazing fruit: it looks like a small, gray football, and has gorgeous orange-pink flesh and a seed that’s toxic and wonderful for making insecticide. It tastes…like mamey. I’d almost describe it as a milder papaya, vaguely pumpkin-flavored with a hint of coconut, but that wouldn’t help anyone even if it was accurate. Trust me, it’s delicious. (But also trust: don’t eat the seed, or even the flesh that’s right next to it just to be safe…you don’t want to know what it does.)

    I decided to could make something quick, delicious, and just weird enough to make me happy. What did I do? I cut up the mamey, sprinkled it with lime juice (not very much), and added sichuan peppers. Sweet, hot, and flavorful, this was a winning dessert that might even qualify as a healthy pre-gym snack.

    -MAW

  • 16Jul

    mate

    I’m not going to even try and puzzle out how many “Nearly Broke” in DC and Arlington Articles I’ve written since my grad student days…a few years ago.  Here is the new installment (sans a roman numeral):

    I enjoyed seeing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last night, but a few mojitos beforehand wouldn’t have hurt too much.

    Wheeeeee….special effects – is Harry flying, or am I?

    Before a night of Georgetown Waterfront bars such as Sequoia or Tony & Joe’s, or seeing the new Harry Potter movie at the Georgetown Theatre, you can imbibe your choice of 6 kinds of $6 mojitos (mango, cucumber, pomegranate, etc.) or a couple of kinds of $7 martinis (mango, passion fruit) during the Happy Hour at Mate‘.   Happy Hour Appetizers, Soup, Salads are Half Price, and discounted maki (rolls) range from $3.50 (California, spicy tuna , and salmon/avocado rolls) to $6 (rainbow rolls) or $7 (volcano rolls).  I’m not a fan of volcano rolls (since they are difficult to eat) but I enjoyed the rainbow and salmon/avocado rolls, the mixed greens salad ($3.50), and the fruit flavored mojitos.

    Mate’ is part of Mauricio Fraga-Rosenfeld’s  Latin Concepts group, along with places like Chi-Cha Lounge and Gua-rapo.  Their website describes Mate’ as such:

    “Mate is decadent, lush and entirely unexpected in historic Georgetown. All red décor, very luxe Panton spiral lamps, red Luna chairs, a sleek aluminum bar and a Latin inspired sushi menu are brought together to create a sophisticated and seductive atmosphere for Washingtonians.”

    Mate’s Happy Hour is Monday-Friday 5pm-7pm, and their address is 3101 K St., NW.

    -JAY

    Maté on Urbanspoon

  • 07Jul
    By Johnsu - http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnsu01/3286038831/

    This is one of those dishes that just crept up on me – building from a variety of ideas drifting through my head all day, looking for purchase.  I’d had the sprouts for a while, and they needed eating.  I’ve been roasting the sprouts with garlic, to lovely effect, but knew even when I bought these that this time, I wanted something different.

    Watching Bourdain scarf down a gorgeous-looking soy green soup with chili sauce in Shanghai, I wanted chili sauce.

    Here’s what I did:

    Clean and halve the sprouts.  Toss them in a pan with about 1.5 tablespoons mirin, over medium heat, and cover.  Leave them to caramelize, stirring every 5 minutes, until they’re almost done.  Now toss in your garlic.

    While cooking, add about 3 teaspoons of chili sauce and equal volume cream to a glass or small mixing bowl and stir like hell to emulsify.  Add fish sauce if you’re so inclined (I did).

    Turn up the heat on your pan to medium-high (maybe a bit more) and stir in the sauce – it’ll scald fast, and that’s good.  Let it cook till it’s just a sticky coating on the sprouts, and they are just barely done.  Transfer to a serving vessel, and cover.  Now, deglaze your pan with rice wine, letting it reduce about 3/4 to a nice rich sauce.  Pour that over your sprouts.

    I ate mine over scrambled egg whites, because I felt like it.  The eggs sopped up the extra sauce, which was lovely, and also made me feel better about all that cream, by not having yolks.

    – MAW

    (Photo by Johnsu)

  • 30Jun

    images

    Over the weekend I attended a birthday party at Bistro Bis, and by pure chance, it turned out to be the first day of their new summer menu. Located within the Hotel George, the décor is very “nouveau” hotel (aka slightly tacky). The main dining room, with a view of the kitchen, seemed a much nicer place to eat. My booth, however, was roomier than a New Jersey diner, and raised-off the floor at a comfortable height. Now I have heard great things about this restaurant – a sleeper among the D.C. culinary scene!

    We started with the famed steak tartar. Much has been written about this dish and we ordered with anticipation. I will admit I was a tartar virgin. It was tasty – mayonnaise and capers over-whelmed the palate, but in a nice, comforting way. The mussels, something for which I am more of a Tri-Delt than virgin, were ok. I realize there is a whisper mussel campaign going on in this city – they make everyone’s “Top 5” list at this restaurant or another – but I can’t jump on the wagon. They’re tasty, oui, but the tartar was definitely the Wonderboy and the mussels an Invisible Girl.

    For dinner, a tuna dish that our waiter suggested was a nicoise delight, with olives aplenty. My dear sir, I would have to disagree. But perhaps, to be fair, this dish didn’t stand a chance as I had read the menu before arriving and was drooling for the sweetbreads. Alas, new menu, no sweetbreads. The offal train has left the station and is gaining speed – why oh why would you remove it from the menu! In the end, however, the tuna was well-cooked and quite yummy. Combined with some flat noodles and a very complimentary sauce. I was lucky enough to also taste the duck – always heaven – and the lamb. Portions were hearty and everyone was satisfied.

    For dessert, petit fours! Even the woman on Intervention last night who hadn’t eaten solid food in 15 years would probably break the rules for a little cake. These cakes weren’t the traditional fondant laden sweet cubes. (By the way, fondant is ruining our world, but that’s another topic altogether!) These mini cookies, jellies, and cakes were the perfect finale to a very solid meal. Does the bistro live up to the hype? It does. The price? Not so sure. Vidalia’s little red-headed French step-brother deserves a moment outside of the shadow of its much beloved bigger sister. I’m not convinced this a go-to restaurant in a city filled with opportunity, but the offer of sweetbreads may be able to lure me back.

    AEK

  • 22Jun

    farm10

    Would you guess it? There were two Virginia Summer Solstice Farm Dinner’s on June 20th. And both were hosted by top chefs from the area! A while back, I bought tickets to one of the dinners hosted by Chef Tony Chittum of Vermillion. My friends, who I suggested should come along, bought tickets to a similar dinner hosted by Chef Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve. Our only communication after this separate purchasing was about car-pooling to the event, ignorant to the fact there were two separate dinners – our e-mails were only titled “Virginia Summer Solstice Farm Dinner.” Imagine my surprise when we arrived at the wrong dinner – too late to drive to the other. After a somewhat cold reception from a French woman – surprise – we discovered there were only two tickets available for purchase. Off to the ATM! (A difficult task in the middle of nowhere Virginia!) Finally, after handing over an obscene amount of money (for the second time), we sauntered up the hill to begin our Solstice extravaganza as presented by Chef Armstrong.

    I could write all day about the wines of the evenings. Local to the Rappahannock region, they were true Virginia. I’ll highlight one; the Rappahannock Cellars Cabernet Franc (2007) was just as this wine should be – rich, full bodied, and, dare I say it, world class. To start, however, we drank a delicious blueberry Wasmund’s Rye cocktail. The rye, from the Copper Fox Distillery, is 100 percent American made, one barrel at a time (or so the brochure tells me). After the incidents of just a few minutes earlier, the comedy of errors, I was desperate for a drink. With a rye in one hand, and a Rappahannock Cellars Seyval Blanc (2008) in the other, I strode up to the tent for dinner.

    Placed on top of a small hill, gorgeous views of green, lush mountains enveloped us. As guests scurried to claim a seat that would best showcase the impending sunset, my party plopped down and enjoyed the moment. A beautiful breeze blew and the food began. We started with a lovely smoked trout salad with horseradish vinaigrette. Although the white dollops were first mistaken for goat cheese, the confusion was quickly overcome by the pure genius of the dish.

    Our next course was roasted loin of lamb served over a daube of braised shoulder. The lamb was raised on the very farm where we were eating, the Mount Vernon Farm of Sperryville. It was nicely cooked without a hint of gaminess. Now, I am not a lamb eater by nature, but this was wonderful. And I’m sure the meal was only enhanced by the setting sun. When the sun went down, out came the cheese course – an Everona Piedmont. As it turns out, it was sourced at the farm of a man sitting to our left. A gentleman farmer, he had just returned from a cheese tasting tour of Montenegro. I don’t know what to say about that.

    For dessert, a bread pudding with cherries. Not so good. For the first time during the event, I was reminded that the food was being reheated and not cooked directly on site. It was crusty on top – in that dried out kind of way. But by that point in the evening, the wine had flowed, the food had been wonderful, the butter a divine inspiration, and the outdoor kitchen was in the dark. Je t’excuse! After such a harrowing adventure upon arrival, the evening ended in perfect splendor.

    AEK

  • 22Jun

    seattle-towerHaving already gorged myself on delicacies like fois gras and bahn mi, I realized that my time in Seattle would not be complete without a visit to at least one of Famous Chef Tom Douglas’ restaurants.  So, for my final day there (sans conferencing) I wandered back down towards the market and decided to try brunch at Etta’s (WARNING: mildly obnoxious flash site!).

    I was greeted and seated quickly, at a nice booth looking out the window or at the bar.  And there, I waited (luckily, it was also Free Comic Book Day, so on my way down I’d picked up a selection to read).  Finally, the waitress brought me some much-needed coffee, which unfortunately turned out to be a cup of the aforementioned Starbucks.

    A while later, I ordered, choosing the salmon-cake Eggs Benedict. This was, sadly, a mistake. The hollandaise was a bit bland, the cakes heavy and a touch dry.  Plus, I really have to ask: why the hell would you make a salmon CAKE with all that fabulous fresh fish available, just across the street?? I admit my fault in ordering it, but I was curious (and hopeful).  Le sigh.  Lesson probably never to be learned.

    Willing to give the Iron Chef winner a second chance, I decided to eat my final dinner in Seattle at Palace Kitchen, conveniently located across the street from where I stayed.  I got there fairly late again, and rather than wait for a table, I opted to sit at the very pretty bar, overlooking the entirely open kitchen and with a good view of the Sounders game, which was on TV.  The place feels much bigger than it is, and has a nice, wood-fire-like lighting scheme.  I really love getting to watch the kitchen work.

    The bartender was very nice (also: hot), and immediately introduced me to the bar-snack bowl of hickory smoked almonds.  These were bloody fantastic, but apparently a stand-in for the usual pistachios.  I can’t imagine how those could be better.  I drank some local cream ale whose name I don’t remember but which was delicious.  For my dinner, I had two appetizers: a small order of plin, and sliced raw geoduck with pickled vegetables.

    Plin are a Piedmontese pasta – basically tube-shaped ravioli. Filled with roast pork and chard, these were fabulous. The pork was sweet and nutty, perfectly complimented by Parmesan over top.  The chard hinted at itself but I couldn’t really taste it as much as I’d have liked – a touch more might have been nice. The geoduck was also quite good: it’s most similar, for me, to octopus, but with a smoother texture and a more floral and almost nutty flavor.  The black pepper vinaigrette was perfect on the acidity scale, but I’m not sure that black pepper wasn’t too much.  I might have preferred white.

    All in all, Palace Kitchen was quite good.  Some of the details were less than perfect for me, but on the whole I had a great time and left happy.  Had I more time in Seattle, I’d go back for a proper dinner, and maybe even be a regular at the bar.  It’s a bit pricey (the small plate of plin was $14), but not terribly so.  And I could eat those almonds off the bartender’s abs all night.

     

    -MAW

  • 09Jun

    chocolateWhen Hernan Cortez conquered Mexico in 1521, chocolate was introduced to Spain. The Spanish added sugar and cinnamon to the bitter drinking chocolate recipes of the Aztecs and Mayans. By the late 1600s, the British discovered the Spanish drink and began adding milk to the recipe, thus creating what would become the winter obsession of people worldwide for the next few centuries. By the mid 1700s, the industrial revolution afforded the technology to create solid chocolate bars.

    Chocoholics everywhere are grateful for the evolution of chocolate. However, for the three centuries since the advent of the solid chocolate bar, an essential Aztec/Mayan ingredient has been largely absent: the chili pepper.  Happily, for adventurous palates, in recent years, many of the finer chocolatiers have reintroduced the not so humble chili into specialty chocolate bars.

    Click here to see my review of seven chili (and other hot pepper) flavored dark chocolates

    By guest writer Carla Haus

  • 09Jun

    180px-single_lavendar_flower02

    What can’t you do with lavender?! There are the obvious conventional uses; as fodder for honeybees, as an essential oil for your incense burner, and the blossoms are all too familiar in potpourri assortments. But there are some other, less predictable uses. Sachet away!

    I recently infused some vodka with lavender. Delicious. And for a party, I made a lemon cake drenched in lavender infused cream. What a hit! I stock up on the flowers any time I’m at my local co-op. It’s something unique to sprinkle on baked goods, and a surprising addition to various concoctions. Just Google “lavender recipes” and over 2.5 million entries will be available for your enjoyment.

    I urge you to experiment with herbs in unconventional ways.  And let me know what surprises you discover!

    AEK

  • 01Jun

    This past weekend I was car-jacked at gun point outside of my house.  While this was a horrible event, I realize it could have been much worse.  Aside from some sleepless nights and some physical pain, my partner and I have made it out 1) alive, and 2) aware that every day is valuable.  After returning from the police station at about 1 a.m. the question was, what do we drink?

    Our neighbor had brought over a cab sav earlier in the night – after he learned of the incident.  And while I do love a hearty red, this event didn’t seem to call for a cheap heavy wine.  Gin and tonic perhaps?  It’s almost an every day drink in my household so I wouldn’t want to taint this standard with such a horrible event.  In the end, I went for my steady Pinot Grigio – it’s my go-to, it’s my Linus blanket.  And it did the trick.  I may not have fallen asleep until the sun came up, but I was commiserating with an old friend.  Is alcohol a crutch?  After a gun’s been pointed to your face, damn straight it is!

    And the next night?  I had a beautiful rose champagne – why?  Because I was taking back the night! and celebrating life!

    What is your go-to food/drink when you need some comfort?  Mac and cheese (p.s. I love you mac and cheese)? Butterscotch krimpets (p.s. I love you Tastycake!)?  Glenmorangie?  I’d love to know what you do  – after all, no matter how old we are, food is memory, and memories bring us comfort.

    – AEK

    (I’m sorry there’s no picture, but somehow, visuals seem inappropriate.)

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