Striptease: A Photoessay

I saw Little Miss Sunshine last week and decided that I need a routine of my own. It took me forever to work it out.


And here it is, set either to N.E.R.D. "She Wants To Move" or The Raconteurs "Level," whichever your pleasure. Pleasure being the point here, of course.










Get comfortable.














Ready?













Press play.













Turn it up.































That's all you get. Don't be greedy.




Please note: no cheese was harmed in the making of this post. In fact, I think it rather enjoyed itself.

A Stroke Of Genius

I don’t know who came up with it, I don’t know how they came up with it, nor do I care. All I know is that deep fried pickles are pure brilliance. They are just about the most perfect thing I have eaten in a long time.

I have had deep fried blue cheese-stuffed olives (Linwood Grill) and they are fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but they have nothing on deep fried pickles. The ones in the picture above are on the menu at Cambridge Common on Mass Ave – really not a place worth traveling to, except for the aforementioned deep fried genius.

The pickle spears are battered and deep fried, served blazing hot with a side of chipotle mayonnaise (they call it aioli but face it, it's mayo) and ranch dressing. The pickles are a perfect combination of textures and flavors – the batter is crisp on the outside but gives to some chewiness, the pickles are (obviously) salty, juicy, and still a bit crunchy, the salt balances with the subtle sweetness of the batter. The ranch dressing is pointless, as always, but the spicy and slightly smoky chipotles in the mayonnaise elevate the deep fried pickles to status of the best deep fried thing I have ever had. With a pint of Oktoberfest from Nashoba brewery, the deep fried pickles were my salvation from a weekend in lab.



Cambridge Common
1667 Mass Ave (Harvard Square)
Cambridge MA 02138
617.547.1228

A Love Story

I have been remiss in my blogging. I have kept my personal life locked away and shrouded in mystery. The time has come to divulge all. So here goes. Clotilde has Maxence, Michelle has LB, Beckham has Posh Spice, and I…
... I have my Wusthof 8” chef’s knife.

We have been through a lot together, my knife and I, both good and bad. I owe my knife a great deal. It was the reason I started cooking as much as I do now. I have always baked, even when I was little (weird, huh?) but never cooked. I had been making the same three things my Mom taught me, interspersed with the occasional veggie burger. That was pretty much the extent of it. For some unknown reason, likely to do with the need to divert the attention onto myself, I convinced myself that I really really need a really really nice knife…while registering with Gopi for her wedding. Unlike most fairy tales, our love was not the instant, at-first-sight kind. I weighed my options, deliberately and carefully. And I do mean weighed. I tried a number of different knives to see how they would balance in my hand and how heavy they were.

The final decision came down to a Global chef’s knife and the Wusthof. Upon consideration, I realized that my feelings for the Global did not run deep, they were not were not true. I was being seduced by the Global’s connections - it was featured in a GQ article earlier that year. In actuality, I found the Global’s handle slippery and uncomfortable. It just didn’t fit my hand well. The tip of the blade kept wanting to point down - the handle wasn't weighted enough. Once the veil of unfair influence was lifted, I realized that it is the Wusthof and I who must be together. It felt right - heavy enough to cut through dense things yet light enough for minute manipulation. We were meant to be together. At this point, the Bed, Bath and Beyond sales guy said he had to walk me to the register with the knife, totally ruining the romantic moment. Apparently, they don’t trust people to walk around the store with a potential murder weapon. Pity.

And so I brought my knife home and everything changed. I realized that I didn’t cook much because it always took so damn long to chop everything with the awful knife I had been using since college (*shudder*). Hmmm… I guess size does matter. With the Wusthof, everything was so much faster and easier, requiring far less effort. It even cut through butternut squash. Squash used to be the bane of my existence, regularly reducing me to tears as I tried to pry my unfit college knife out of its clutches, having to utilize limbs that don’t belong on cutting boards. Herbs and garlic got minced by milling, just like on TV. Tomatoes were cut without shaking the knife off their slippery skins directly onto my finger. It was brilliant! Somehow, making dinner after getting home from a full (and likely shitty) day in lab didn’t seem like such a horrendous proposition. Dinner, in actuality, became an event – an excuse for me to spend time with my awesomely significant other, my chef’s knife.

I put the knife to good use and, eventually, all the chopping and the milling and the occasional falls to the floor (narrowly missing my bare toes) took their toll – the blade had dulled and was all out of whack, the edge no longer straight. The magic had seeped out of our relationship. The same problems I had with the college knife came back to haunt me. Everything was taking far too much effort, too much time - chopping became a chore again. The Wusthof was even starting to draw blood from my hands as it slipped off the item being chopped.

An immediate intervention in order, I took the knife to Sur La Table to be sharpened and honed. Sharpen it they did, but left their mark. The sharpening left scars, scuffs along the blade. [Also, the few (ok, many) times I tossed the knife into the sink in a semi-drunken haze without washing it straight away led to some discoloration of the blade.] I happen to think that scars add dimension, to knives and people both, so I was ok with it. And it cut just like new! It was back, and I was happy once more. I won’t wait so long to sharpen it next time.

So now you know my story. That’s it. Nothing else to tell. I owe my many dinners, and likely this blog, to my chef’s knife.


P.S. No, Wusthof did not sponsor this blog post, although I am willing to entertain any offer that comes my way.

Gluttony Saves The Day

I went on an eating rampage yesterday. I really think I hurt myself. This was a very food-intensive day the likes of which haven’t been seen since my trip to Texas. The day started innocently enough, a normal breakfast and tea, as every morning. And then it all went downhill. A giant experiment blew up in my face (not literally. Not this time, anyway), the head of the lab was out of town, and I needed a drink. Note the needed. Not wanted, but needed. That’s probably a bad sign.

We had decided on Pizzeria Regina prior to the experiment blowing up – now it looked even more attractive. I cannot believe that I have lived in Boston for 5 years and had never been to Pizzeria Regina until yesterday. It’s a disgrace, really. Pizzeria Regina is a North End establishment – has been there for ages (since 1926) – and is said to have some of the best pizza in the city. Their pitchers of beer aren’t half bad either.

After taking an absurdly long time to decide on a pizza – this is not a trivial matter, the final vote was: sausage, mushrooms, half eggplant and half cherry tomatoes. The crust really made this pizza. It was crunchy but chewy enough, with a good balance of cheese and sauce. I did not feel my usual compulsion to blot the grease off the pizza with a napkin – such an unattractive thing to do but I can’t help it. Fresh tomatoes on a pizza are so great – sweet, acidic, and juicy all at the same time.

The beer calmed me down and the pizza put me in a food coma, thus making the rest of the lab day a little easier to swallow (ha). Oh if only the eating had stopped there. But no. I had plans to meet Gopi and Girish at one of Girish’s favorite restaurants in the city, Shabu Zen in Chinatown. [I am all kinds of multi-culti, by the way: lunch in Little Italy, dinner in Chinatown…].

My first shabu-shabu experience was definitely worth the 40 minute wait for a table – the place is insanely busy. As soon as we were seated, I ordered a watermelon smoothie that I had been eyeing from the entryway for about 38 minutes of the 40 minute wait. The smoothie was made with fresh watermelon (melons were piled up on the bar) and ice. I think that may have been it. It tasted like watermelon on crack – as though 10 melons were squeezed together into one glass and chilled. Very smooth, not too sweet, fresh and perfect. The second thing we ordered was a gigantic bottle of hot sake. Apparently, at Shabu Zen, when they say bottle of sake, they actually mean a bottle, not those dainty carafes I was expecting. Sooo much sake. Together with the green tea and ice water, I probably had enough for a liquid dinner. This was only a sign of excesses to come.

Each diner gets their own bowl of broth boiling over a hotplate and a choice of thinly sliced meat (chicken, pork, lamb, seafood, various cuts of beef, or Kobe beef (!)).


The meat is slightly frozen and sliced on a deli slicer to make super thin slices that can cook quickly in the boiling broth. [That’s the whole kitchen! A bunch of deli slicers. A brilliant business plan.]


The combo dinner includes and vegetables (enoki mushrooms, napa cabbage, carrot, corn, watercress, tofu, tomatoes) which are dipped into the boiling broth to cook quickly, dipped in soy sauce with various flavorings (garlic, hot chili, scallion) and eaten with either rice or noodles. I had the surf and turf which consisted of mixed seafood (scallop, squid, salmon, and some variety of white fish), and sirloin. Combined with the vegetables, it was a truly obscene amount of food. Ridiculous, even.


The salmon was the star of the show. I actually don’t like salmon very much (one of two foods on this planet I am not crazy about – the other being anything anise flavored, excluding fennel, in case anyone was curious) but this was extraordinary – cooked only lightly in the spicy broth, with the interior of the salmon slice still raw, it melted in the mouth. Just melted, leaving some of the soy sauce and chili behind, along with a perfectly subtle flavor of the salmon.

The beef I ordered didn’t do a whole lot for me – there was an awful lot of fat on every piece. I simply cannot justify chewing a plain piece of fat, straight up. I may be alone in this. Girish, however, is a clever, clever man. He ordered Wagyu beef (variety of Kobe beef). Oy. These cows have a better life than I do – they are fed beer and sake and massaged. Yes, massaged, to distribute the fat and improve marbling. I have to distribute my fat all by my sad self. No fair. Wagyu beef was like meat crossed with butter. The texture had nothing in common with the beef I am used to – there was nothing to chew. It dissolved, leaving a very smooth and intense taste of beef behind. It was unbelievable. Should I one day win the lottery, I will 1) buy an SLR McLaren (and pretend I don’t know that Paris Hilton has one) and 2) eat only Wagyu beef for the rest of my life. That life is likely to be rather short due to my driving at 150 miles an hour and eating fatty beef, but it sure will be short and sweet.

As if all that wasn't enough... The meal ended with red bean dessert soup – well-chilled and sweet, with a barley tea flavor, it went remarkably well with the rest of the meal.

Shabu-shabu may not be the best first date place (or fourth, for that matter) since you leave a little smelly. Although some people may find the scent of boiled beef alluring, I do not. Shabu Zen in particular, is loud and in constant motion – great fun for a group, but not the most intimate of settings. The food was great - fresh, and certainly plentiful.

A long walk to the car was deemed mandatory for our continuing cardiovascular health, following which I was kindly dropped off by my apartment. Incidentally, my neighborhood is currently overrun by newly returned college students. Why do they think everything is automatically funnier if it is yelled? I don’t understand. Regardless, I am on food lock down for the next 2 days. As if I will even be hungry before next week. Nothing like gluttony to salvage a perfectly crappy day.

Pizzeria Regina
11 1/2 Thacher St
Boston MA 02113
617.227.0765

Shabu Zen
16 Tyler St
Boston MA 02111
617.292.8828

Wallflower Soup

I propose a commentary on our life and society based on my last two markedly contrasting posts. How about this: while an eggplant stack is the high school cheerleader with perfect dimples who is dying to be taken seriously (obvious flash, subtle substance), corn and potato soup is the awkward wallflower at the sock hop who just wants Billie-the-football-player to look over (all substance, desperately lacking flash). An extended metaphor, I know, but an apt one. The soup I made was ugly. It really just was. So, no picture of the final product. To give you an idea, my poor soup bore a striking resemblance to what I would imagine was Oliver Twist’s gruel. If it is any consolation, my soup had a lovely personality - it wasn’t much to look at but I’ll be damned if it didn’t taste good.

This all started as a result of my choosing beer and cheese and crackers for dinner over actually cooking anything for an embarrassing number of days in a row. The sweet corn I received in my Boston Organics box was crying for action and attention -- I had to use it before it quit on me.

Two disparate thoughts came together to generate the idea that would later become my wallflower of a soup. First was the broccoli soup that Clotilde deemed her best ever; the base of the soup was enriched with an aged cheese rind and parsley stems. [This is why I have had a cheese rind and parsley stems in my freezer for the last six months (six months due to the fact that I choose beer and cheese over a real dinner routinely)]. The other idea came from a Boston Globe interview with the chef at Lineage, the somewhat new restaurant that has replaced my beloved Lucy’s on Harvard St. in Coolidge Corner (interesting tidbit – Lucy was Mitzi-the-owner’s dog. Much better name for a restaurant than Mitzi’s).

Using seasonal ingredients is, of course, de rigueur in new Boston restaurants, as well it should be. The soup of the moment at Lineage is a sweet corn soup that is started by sauteing leeks, shallots, and onions, then adding sweet corn, Yukon Gold potatoes, a stock made from corn cobs, chicken stock and some cream to finish. I see a number of problems with executing this recipe in my own, limited, kitchen. For one, do I really need to include every possible form of onion in my soup? No, indeed I do not. Secondly, cream scares me, so I never have any around. I am working on getting over this debilitating phobia of liquid fat, I promise. But a stock made from corn cobs sounded like a pretty neat idea.

I set out to “build” my soup with as much flavor as I could shove into it. I started by making a corn stock with parsley stems, corn cobs, and an aged Gouda rind. [The picture of the stock is there to replace that of the final, unappealing gruel-like soup product]. The smell coming from this pot was unbelievable. While the stock was infusing with corn and cheese, I was chopping onions and garlic (and drinking beer) for the second stage of the soup making. I sautéed the onion and garlic in some olive oil until softened, added corn and potatoes and stirred them about until the potatoes released some starch. I then added the strained stock and let it all bubble contentedly away while I continued on my merry cheese-eating way.

Once the potatoes were tender, I pureed the soup with my stick blender, which I still get a dorky thrill from using. It was at this point that I realized my soup was going to have a difficult life ahead of it. The other kids were not going to play with it. It looked plain and slightly consumptive: a pale, chunky puree. But I still loved it, as any mother would.

Upon tasting my outcast of a soup, I was surprised to find it lacking the depth of flavor I would expect from a soup infused with cheese. It is too bad I was drinking beer and eating, um, cheese while making the soup – I made the mistake of using water for the base of the soup as opposed to chicken stock. To remedy, I thinned the soup with chicken stock, added more salt, a bit of white pepper and parsley. That did the trick. The chicken broth made the corn flavor stand out and added a roundness to the soup that I was missing. The fresh parsley made the parsley-infused base come forward. And salt is just salt and my life would be incomplete and meaningless without it. [In case there was any doubt of my dork status, I actually keep a baggie of my own salt in lab so that I do not have to stoop to using the iodized craziness that lives in the lab “food” drawer.]

Clotilde was right: the cheese rind and parsley stems gave a great depth of flavor to an otherwise plain soup. I didn’t even miss the other 15 varieties of onion that I was meant to include.

So that is it. That is the story of my ugly soup with soul. So don’t judge. Some things are worth a second look, even if they are wallflowers and you are Billie-the-football-player. Lesson learned?

Corn and Potato Wallflower Soup

parsley stems
Aged cheese rind (any aged cheese, I suppose. I used an aged Gouda rind and a bit of Parmesan rind)
2 cups water
olive oil
2 ears of sweet corn, kernels cut off the cobs
3 baby Yukon Gold potatoes, thinly sliced
½ medium white onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup chicken stock
salt and freshly cracked black pepper
dash of white pepper
1 tbsp fresh chopped parsley leaves

1) Simmer corn cobs, cheese rind, and parsley stems in 2 cups water for about 30 minutes (or until you get really bored of staring at the pot). Strain the stock. [The smarter thing to do here would probably be to make the corn stock in chicken stock instead of water. Either way would work].
2) Sautee onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat until translucent. Add the corn and potatoes. Cook stirring for about 5 minutes, until the potatoes begin to release some starch. Add the strained stock, season with salt and pepper(s), bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer until the potatoes are tender.
3) Puree the soup with a nifty stick blender (or a regular blender, should you be so unlucky) leaving some texture in the soup – I actually removed some of the corn from the soup prior to blending to leave some kernels whole.
4) Add 1 cup of chicken stock, or as much as will give you your desired soup consistency. Bring to a boil, add parsley, and it’s all done.

Not Just A Pretty Face

As is usually the case when my mind wanders, I was thinking about food while sitting in a 7PM meeting in a torturously stuffy room with torturously eager 1st year grad students (That’s just cruel. Ask anyone). Specifically, I was thinking of something interesting and quick to make for dinner. And then it came to me! A timbale - basically, a snob way of describing something that is stacked, or formed in a circular (or otherwise) mold. I am all for presentation when it comes to food, but only when it is as good to eat as it is to look at. I am not particularly interested in a stack skewered with a poof and topped with foam if all it tastes like is, well, poof.

Luckily, substance and beauty are not mutually exclusive in the world of food. Lisa had a gorgeously colorful timbale with yellow and red beets, layered with goat cheese and candied pecans. It was great! All the layers remained separate till the flavors mixed in your mouth – it was almost as though the dish evolved as you chewed it. Extreme description, I know. I may be prone to hyperbole. So that’s how I thought of a timbale. There. Now you know.

Of course I am only a food snob in spirit – I don’t happen to have various timbales laying around my apartment. I don’t even have a pastry brush, which is just sad. I had to make do with what I had on hand. I was so very happy to get Roma tomatoes and a big beautiful eggplant in my last Boston Organics box (top right corner). It was perfect – heavy, with tight and shiny skin… Not exactly what I look for in a man but it makes for a damn fine eggplant. So, roasted eggplant and Roma tomato timbale (or stack. I think I prefer stack) was the decision. No snobbery molds required.

I was originally planning on making the stacks with goat cheese, a la the Tavern, until I found out that my goat cheese had gotten a little too ripe for my taste. Yeeeaaah it was covered in mold. And not the good kind of mold. So, no goat cheese. Parmesan came in to save the day. I also wanted to use some of my home-grown basil until I discovered that my lovely plant was afflicted with some sort of basil-rot-scabby blight (clearly, a prapple and pecan orchard is not in my future. I can’t even keep basil healthy). So, no basil. Striking out right and left! Balsamic vinegar and good olive oil would have to suffice (a layer of fresh basil or oregano is definitely happening next time I make this).

The roasted eggplant stack was as good as it looked. Roasting brought out a sweetness and depth of flavor in the tomatoes– so much so that the taste reminded me of sundried tomatoes. The sweetness of the tomatoes was balanced by the acidity of the balsamic and the sharpness of the parmesan. The skin of the eggplant remained firm while the flesh practically melted. The eggplant skin helped maintain the integrity of the stack as it was being sliced (this may not be entirely evident in my picture). The eggplant would have greatly benefited from some fresh herbs – the oregano in the picture was purely decorative.

The left over roasted eggplant was happily reincarnated the next day as an eggplant and spinach quiche. Quiche is such a strange food to love, isn’t it? I feel like I should be a grandma playing bridge in order to enjoy quiche as much as I do. Oh well. I am more likely to become a grandmother than play bridge, and that’s saying something.

Roasted Eggplant and Roma Tomato Stack

1 medium eggplant, sliced into ½ inch thick rounds
4 Roma tomatoes, sliced lengthwise into ½ inch thick slices
Parmesan cheese
Balsamic vinegar
olive oil

1) Salt eggplant slices thoroughly and place in colander to drain for about 15 minutes. Wipe off salt and dry with paper towel.
2) Place on a baking sheet along with the tomatoes, brush with olive oil, season with freshly cracked black pepper.
3) Roast under the broiler set to low (maybe 425F if your broiler doesn’t have a low setting?), turning the eggplant occasionally, for about 40 minutes, until the eggplant is browned and soft and the tomatoes have collapsed and lost some moisture. Let cool.
4) Stack as you see fit, pouring a little olive oil and balsamic over each layer. My stack was: eggplant, parmesan, tomato, parmesan, eggplant, parmesan.

P.S. My first post on my brand new MacBook! I love it. Problem is, I loaded it up with all sorts of image processing software that I shamelessly stole from lab and am now spending hours messing with every picture I take. I think I have a wrist cramp. From the mouse. Oh, and Federer is killing Roddick while Tiger Woods looks asleep in the stands. How can someone who plays golf find tennis boring?? Oooh Roddick looks piiiiissed.

Toro

If I were to have a Native American name, would it be something eco-aware like Gurgling Creek or Running Deer? No. It most certainly would not. It would be Uncomfortably Full. I haven’t quite learned the fine art of moderation. Not so much with the moderation.

Kanchan and I went to Toro after she (and others) raved about it [they have no functioning website, if you can believe that]. Toro is Ken Oringer’s (Clio) new tapas restaurant in the South End. It being in the South End meant that I could stare at very pretty gay boys all night, to my heart’s content. The restaurant was absolutely packed when we got there. I felt like I was in a mosh pit full of well-dressed young professionals. This was clearly not the mosh pit of my youth (lack of cigarette burns and surplus of oxygen argued against it) but I got shoved about pretty well while trying to make my way to Kanchan at the bar. And this was on a Wednesday night! Surprisingly, we only had to wait about 30 minutes before scoring a table outside.

Unfortunately, it took us about the same amount of time to settle on a decent wine by the glass as it did to get a table. The frazzled by cooperative server brought over a few wines to try till we found one that was ok among the not so great ones. The wine list by the bottle was much more impressive than by the glass. I was not wimping out, I swear. I drove to the restaurant and was already one cocktail down. An entire bottle of wine was not the best idea, given the circumstances. Next time though, no fooling around - we go for the bottle.

I think that the best way to present everything that we ate is in chronological order. So here goes. First up were veal sweetbreads with a yellow tomato puree and wild mushrooms. Neither Kanchan nor I were crazy about this. The texture of the sweetbreads themselves was far less light than I was expecting and to be honest, the taste rather resembled uh, chicken. The tomato puree was very smooth, thick, and enriched with cream, which took away the acidity and most of the flavor of the tomatoes. Eh.

The specialty of the house is grilled corn on the cob (in the back of the sweetbread picture – got too involved with eating to take pictures, bad blogger that I am…). Grilled corn doesn’t sound all that interesting, admittedly, but holy crap is it good: drenched in a thick garlicky butter sauce, topped with shredded hard goat cheese and served with a wedge of lime. The corn was juicy and crisp and so full of sugar that the blackened grilled parts actually tasted like caramel. For the first time in my life I can say that the cheese wasn’t entirely necessary.

Garlic shrimp was as it sounded, swimming in garlicky olive oil and grilled to a nice crunch on the outside. Rabbit and snails with carrot marmalade and parsley puree was meltingly soft and far on the sweet side from the carrots. The presentation of the rabbit was involved – the rabbit was impaled with a long wooden snail kebab, a dab of bright green parsley puree on the side.

Time for the important part, the part that led me to my Native American name and all the pain it implies – the paella. The paella was traditional, as far as I could tell. Short grain rice was cooked in a thick broth with chorizo, saffron, pan fried chicken, mussels and clams, and sprinkled with fresh peas at the last minute. The amount of saffron was just right – not overwhelming yet markedly present. The paella got so much better as it sat (I am pretty certain this was not due to our continued drinking). I think the flavors of the dense and salty sausage needed some time to spread throughout the rice. It tasted a lot better 20 minutes after it had been served. Very odd. Some of the best mussels I have ever had were on that paella – they were giant and meltingly creamy. The fresh peas were neat bursts of freshness among the rice and sausage. We thought we would have lunch for the next day. Ha. That was a lot of food for two people. To be honest, it was a lot of food for four people, but Kanchan and I aren’t quitters. No sir. I earned my way to distended discomfort the hard (but pleasant) way.

There are many reasons to go to Toro – the gorgeous bar, the gorgeous gay boys, the great paella, the tons of things to try on the long menu. Turns out that Kanchan and I are not the only ones to think that Toro is the place to be - Lydia Shire (Excelsior, Locke-Ober) was there! I think Lydia Shire and I may have the same taste in uber-trendy, semi-new restaurants. The last time I saw her I was eating at Mare. The entire kitchen and house staff was hovering over her the entire night. If given another opportunity, I am so going up to her. She is not the most approachable woman in the world and a stranger mumbling something incoherent about a blog and undying adoration will probably not earn much more than a disoriented stare, but I still think it’s worth a shot. Maybe she needs a chauffeur. Or a dog walker. I won’t clean though. I draw the line at cleaning. I think.

Toro
1704 Washington St
Boston MA 02118
617.536.4300
http://www.toro-boston.com

Rendezvous

Rendezvous had an unlikely start – it used to be a Burger King in the middle of Central Sq - not the most fabulous of beginnings. A Boston Globe review I read a while back (I only hate Alison Arnett a little. I mostly just want her job) noted that the ambience of the restaurant is disturbed by the Burger King-like design of the space. Whatever. Yes, from the outside it looks BK-like with its sloped glass awning type thing, and the room is a perfect square. But when you step inside, all thoughts of greasy smelly fried things fall away. The space is warm and inviting - the walls are painted an alive deep yellow and are lined with earth-tone paintings. The back wall is cut to allow glimpses of the kitchen without revealing too much of the technical side of the restaurant.

The servers and hosts were so nice! It was a very pretension free environment, which I always appreciate. I liked that everyone that worked there weren't grudging or irritated or... like me in lab, for example (I think there may be a theme emerging here). They all seemed happy to be there. The hosts especially seemed to take the restaurant and the patrons personally, like they actually cared about my evening. Neat.

The focus of the restaurant is Mediterranean, including North Africa. The kitchen tries to use local and organic produce whenever possible. I was thoroughly conflicted over the menu (always a good sign) but finally settled on the grilled Portuguese sardines to start. The server unobtrusively told me how to eat it the fish. Good thing he did too. I wasn’t sure how to approach at first. The skin of the fish was perfectly crisp, while the white was flesh tender and juicy (I almost wrote succulent but just couldn’t bring myself to be that much of a food writer snob. Guess I kind of used it anyway). The olive oil based sauce around the fish was infused with fennel, fennel seeds, lemon, and garlic and tasted light and summery. The fennel, parsley and lemon worked wonderfully well together.

On to the seafood chowder. I was at first weary of ordering something that sounded like a fall dish (as if we’ve been having summery weather up here. Not like it’s August or anything). I needn’t have worried. The base of the chowder was a light cream, not the heavy and thick stew that I have grown used to in Northeast chowder. The cream was cut by the acidity of red and yellow grape tomatoes and the fresh corn. The lobster and mussels were both very tender and perfectly done. No rubberiness to be had.

My friend had the roasted leg of lamb with harissa, couscous, and grilled eggplant. Again, the initial concern was that the dish was unseasonably heavy (actually, a good portion of the menu did not scream summer to me) but there was no need to fear. The lamb was remarkably light. Or as light as lamb can ever be. No unnecessary grease was to be found; the gaminess of the lamb was muted by the slightly sweet harissa on top. I tasted cinnamon in the harissa but I was obviously imagining it as the harissa recipe on the Rendezvous website makes no mention of cinnamon. We may have been drinking… Since the lamb wasn't terribly lamb-like, I found the eggplant to be the most memorable. The skin of the eggplant was bordering crispiness while the insides melted. Perfect.

[An aside: the website is worth a visit. The chef/owner posts recipes from the restaurant. There is an interesting-looking recipe for a French cabbage stew, garbure. It's on my growing list of things to make].

Now for the dessert – orange polenta cake with crème fraiche and summer berries. The polenta cake was dense and moist and not too sweet, with polenta gritties throughout for texture. Crème fraiche was its regular tangy and refreshing self – or as refreshing as pure cream can be.

And then! There was a then. I tried eau de vie (French brandy) for the first time. Wow. It was perfectly clear with a powerful pear scent (this was pear eau de vie, obviously). Despite the concentrated fruity smell, I felt as though I was drinking rubbing alcohol. It burned all the way down. I am no stranger to vodka, believe me, but this hurt! I think they call it eau de vie because it can bring people back from a coma. The aftertaste was remarkable, I have to admit. A soft and clear pear taste lingered for ages! Or until I absolutely had to have another bite of cake. Neat overall, but I am not sure it was worth the suffering.

The dishes I had surprised me in that they sounded heavy and imposing but were actually light and perfectly seasonal. I walked out slightly less a skeptic than when I walked in. And I loved the room, Alison Arnett be damned. Suffice it to say that I would not cry if all Burger Kings across the world turned into Rendezvous. Or would that be Rendezvouses?

Rendezvous
502 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
617.576.1900

Some Experiments DO Work!

My mind is a giant repository for completely useless knowledge. For example, I have never heard Shooter Jennings’ music, yet I know who he is dating (Drea de Matteo – sort of my hero). I also know that Ms. de Matteo has a vintage clothing boutique in NY. Why oh why can’t my head be filled with oh, I don’t know, information that I can actually use?! Every once in a while my embattled brain gets its revenge in my sleep. As in, it won’t let me have any.

A month ago, and I am not kidding about this, I woke up in the middle of the night to write down a recipe idea that I had been dreaming about. I have many, many issues. Somehow, at around 3AM, my mind translated an Earl Grey flavored chocolate I had the day before into a cheesecake with vanilla and Earl Grey tea layers. Oh and in my dream, I also made a big bow out of cheesecake (somehow) to top the cake with. I don’t even know what to say about that. At least it wasn’t pink.

Oddly enough, conscious me doesn’t like cheesecake nearly as much as unconscious me does. Cookies came to mind as a suitable substitute for the tea-flavored, bow-topped cheesecake of my dreams. Specifically, Clotilde’s Langues de Chat (cat’s tongue) dry petits fours or tea biscuits flavored with Earl Grey tea.

This recipe was a bit of a challenge as I did not have Earl Grey tea powder. I buzzed Earl Grey tea in a food processor and passed it through a sieve in an attempt to generate something resembling a powder. It worked well enough. I also got to use a pastry bag for the first time. Since I don’t actually own a pastry bag, I went the ziplock bag route, cutting off one corner of the bag to extrude the cookies onto the baking sheet (cutting a hole far too large the first time, of course). Since these cookies had a purpose (they were flying to Texas with me the next day) I wanted to ensure that I made something edible should my Earl Grey experiment go down in a ball of flames (as my experiments frequently do... in lab), so I made a second batch of biscuits flavored with vanilla.

Luckily, both the experimental and traditional Langues de Chat came out well. The tea flavor of the experimental batch was subtle yet present. I guess my tea powdering approach was successful because I didn’t feel as though I was chewing tea leaves, although the cookies were peppered with little bits of tea. The edges of the cookies were brown and crisp while the center was slightly chewy. The egg whites gave the cookies their camera-friendly gloss. They were very fn to photograph, as evidenced by the zillion pictures that I took of them. The coarse salt I used made for occasional bites of saltiness with combined with the sweet, which I love [I sometimes butter a pan for brownies with salted butter, making a wonderful salty chocolate edges on the brownies.]

Clotilde’s Langues de Chat with (or without) Earl Grey tea

[I tweaked Clotilde’s recipe, but only a little. She used fleur de sel in her cookies which is, I think, less salty than conventional salt so I cut down on the amount I added to the cookies. I adjusted the oven temperature because the cookies weren’t baking to my liking. This may only a factor of my city apartment oven, however.]

¼ c plus 1 tsp unsalted butter, softened
¼ c plus 1 tbsp sugar
2 egg whites
½ c flour
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp powdered Earl Grey tea or ½ tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 425F.
2. Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy.
3. Add egg whites and beat until combined. Add flour, salt, tea powder and process until smooth.
4. Cover and chill for 1 hour.
5. Cut off a corner of a 1qt ziplock bag to make a 5 mm opening or use an actual, grown up-like pastry bag. Squeeze the batter onto parchment paper-lined baking sheet in 2.5 inch lines.
6. Bake for 8 minutes or until edges of the cookies are brown. Allow to cool on wire rack. Take many many pictures. They like it.




Note: I have since listened to the Shooter Jennings CD and it's great! It's my favorite kind of country music - the kind that only a Manhattan dweller can produce. He sounds like Gram Parsons-tinted Rolling Stones with Mary J. Blige on the backing vocals, occasionally. I am going to his show in two weeks! Btw, Gram Parsons was just about the coolest person that ever lived. 10-14-06.

I'm a Bad, Bad Grad Student

I have reached a new motivational low in lab – I actually took three hours in the middle of day to get my hair cut. Yes, it does indeed take me two hours to get my hair done, plus an hour of travel time. I figured that since I was already in Harvard Square and already wasting half the day away (although time spent getting my hair done can never truly be a waste) I may as well waste even more time by getting lunch from Cardullo’s.

Cardullo’s is the neatest little shop. It’s been in Harvard Sq for ages (56 years, to be precise) and is still run by the Cardullo family. It is packed to the ceiling with spices, teas, chocolates, and imported foods that cannot be found anywhere else. One of the shop’s focuses is British food imports. Their website states: “Britain is no longer the culinary wasteland that it was just three decades ago.” Such a very funny backhanded compliment, and so true. I speak from experience when it comes to Britain’s horrid gastronomical past. For one, I have tried Marmite. Curiosity almost killed the cat on that one. Blech. And I eat everything. I mean everything! Another quote from the Cardullo’s website defines Marmite as: “a thick black paste made from yeast and vegetable extract, beloved only by those who acquired a taste for it in childhood.” That may be the understatement of the century.

But I digress. The shop is definitely worth the trek to Harvard Sq, if only for the curious sight of Cod Roe spread in a squeezable tube that I can only assume is imported from some sort of Nordic country. They also happen to have a deli counter with prepared salads and an extensive list of sandwiches that they make in front of you. I ordered the Tuscan to go - grad student guilt started kicking in at this point (guilt is really such a useless emotion). I would have much preferred to eat my sandwich while sitting on one of the chairs outside the shop in the middle of Harvard Sq. But again, I digress.

The Tuscan: grilled chicken breast with olive tapenade (kalamata olives and capers as the two major ingredients), marinated tomato salad, eggplant spread, and arugula on fresh focaccia bread. Although it does not look like much in the picture, it may well be my perfect sandwich. Every last ingredient was screamingly fresh. [Screamingly is not my word, sadly. I stole it from Anthony Bourdain.] The oil from the tapenade soaked into the bread flavoring it all through with olive-tinted saltiness. The chicken was wonderfully moist and almost creamy in texture. The mildness of the chicken was cut by occasional bites of sharp bitterness of the arugula and the tang of vinegary tomatoes. My only wish was for more eggplant, but then again, one can never have enough eggplant.

All in all, Cardullo’s was definitely worth my truancy. Nothing like a great sandwich to assuage the waves of guilt from skipping out on work. Plus, I have cute hair.

Cardullo’s Gourmet Shoppe
6 Brattle St
Cambridge, MA 02138
617.491.8888

May have to take another three hours to try out the squeezable Cod Roe. Wish me luck.

Many Margaritas

I didn’t forget the Texas margarita. Here it is, as promised, in all its tequila-laden glory. You are looking at the margarita at La Fogata in San Antonio, of the fantastic salsa fame. It’s giant, it’s garnished with an orchid flower, and it goes down far too easily. The key to that is top shelf liquor. A lot of top shelf liquor. Let’s just say that around the time of my second margarita, I thought it a good idea to see what the orchid flower tastes like (it tastes exactly as it looks, by the way – flowery, crunchy grass).


The La Fogata margarita breakdown goes a little something like this. If you have one, you are having a good time. If you have two, you’re pretty cool (c’est moi). If you have three, you’re a champion. If you have four... you’re stupid. As in, rendered permanently so by the alcohol overdose.

Two posts in one day. Wow. That’s a first for me. Note to self: look into getting a life.
~AK

A Revelation

Who would have thunk it? Watermelon + salt + chile powder = wonderful.

There is a number of thoughts and events that went into the making of this seemingly bizarre combination. Not sure anyone is actually interested, but here goes.

To start, I am obsessed with watermelon. I go through an embarrassing amount of watermelon on a weekly basis in the summer. Anything having to do with watermelon is likewise part of the obsession. Watermelon tastes like the essence of summer to me. By the way, if you don’t make a complete mess of yourself and everything around you while eating it, you’re doing it wrong.

Lara told me she prefers her watermelon with salt. I know that a lot of people salt their fruit – it’s more common than not in India. And Vietnam as well, I think. I have had mango with salt (and chile powder) and guava with salt, but I have never tried (or even thought about trying) watermelon and salt. You know what? It’s great! The salt makes the watermelon juicier (if that’s possible) and adds a whole another dimension of flavor that I can only describe as meaty. Weird, I know. I have a serious suspicion that salt brings out the umami flavor in watermelon. If that is not the worst foodie snob remark I have ever made, I don’t know what is. Still, I think there may be some truth to it, if I understand umami correctly.

So, my obsession was step one, Lara was step two. The final piece of the puzzle came from Lisa, in the car to Alaska… Ahem, Worcester, as it’s commonly known. Lisa said that chile powder would be interesting in combination with salt and watermelon, and so, the watermelon combo was born. Yes, we were talking about salted watermelons in the car. Is that not normal?

Well-chilled, cubed watermelon with a sprinkling of coarse salt and a hefty pinch of red chile powder made for a great first dish in a dinner that I had the pleasure of making for Kanchan. It was sweet, salty, spicy, crunchy, (umami?) and cold all at the same time. Very impressive for only three ingredients. The salt works its magic if the watermelon is allowed to sit too long, leaving the watermelon limp and sad. Having to eat it all straight away, however, did not pose much of a challenge. I think next time I may add some mint or cilantro for color contrast.

So, there you have it. I think an illustration of my thought process is way scarier than watermelon + salt + chile powder.
~AK

The Famous and Fabulous Hatch Green Chile

I was lucky enough to visit Texas during the very short season for the renowned Hatch green chile. These chiles are grown in only one place – Hatch, New Mexico, the self-proclaimed chile capital of the world. Everything in Texas last week was Hatch – Hatch green chile sausage, chile bread, chile layered inside brie with olive oil (OMG how good would that be). People are obsessed with them – ask anyone West of, well, Boston. Somehow, the chiles just don’t make it all the way out here.

The chiles are ready for harvest during a ridiculously narrow window of time – something like 2 weeks. They are roasted over an open flame – the smell that is emitted from the roaster is unbelievable. I could stand there and just inhale all day. The roasting process was really neat to watch – the chiles bounce around in the spinning cage over an open flame. One second they are perfectly normal-looking fresh green chiles and the next they collapse onto themselves, all charred and fragrant and releasing juice. I guess once they reach a critical temperature they just *poof* and roast. Very fun to watch (and smell), but I think less fun to actually do – the guy roasting chiles at a farmers market was in a bit of pain from all the capsaicin hitting him in the face from the roaster.

I didn’t know what the big deal with these chiles was until I actually ate one. The depth of flavor of a roasted Hatch chile is indescribable. Due to that fact, and because I have a headache, I will not attempt to describe the aforementioned indescribable depth of flavor of a Hatch chile. All I will say is that both the hot and mild Hatch chiles are very sweet. I didn’t think that chiles that size are ever very hot but believe me, these were hot. Really hot.

The chiles I brought back were roasted on a Sunday and I moved plans around so that I could cook with them on Monday, when I got back home. I am aware that I have a problem. I didn’t have a chance to look up an actual, authentic New Mexican chilli recipe so I winged it a bit. I make no claims of this resembling anything ever prepared by New Mexicans, Texans, or anyone else who has ready access to Hatch green chiles. Lucky bastards. [Headache still there. Can you tell?]

For the green chile stew or whatever it is that I made (mush?) I used a mix of hot and mild chiles – 4 hot and 3 mild. It pains me terribly to admit this, but I actually seeded a couple of the hot chiles to knock down the heat level a little. I have failed myself… I had to! The end result was still a very spicy stew/mush. I think most people peel the roasted chiles but I didn’t. I really like the charred flavor of the burnt skin and I figured that the immersion blender will take care of any textural issues which it did, quite nicely. Allowing the chicken to cook with the rest of the mush kept it very juicy and infused it with the chile flavor.

You will have to forgive me – I went a little nuts with the pictures of tomatillos in various stages of undress. They are just so damn photogenic!

Hatch Green Chile Stew/Mush/Chili (don’t know what I should call it)

Olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 whole chicken breast, chopped into large-ish chunks
4 medium tomatillos, chopped
7 roasted peppers (Hatch green chiles if you are fortunate enough, or Anaheim or Poblano chiles would work, right?) with their juice
½ cup chicken stock
2 tbsp cilantro
juice of ½ lime

1) Saute onion and garlic in olive oil until onion is translucent. Add in chicken, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and cook until chicken browns a little.
2) Add chiles with their juice, tomatillos, and chicken stock. Lower hear, cover and cook until the tomatillos break down and the chicken is cooked through, ~10-15 minutes.
3) Remove the chicken to a separate dish and buzz the chile/tomatillo mush with an immersion blender. Add the chicken back, add the cilantro and lime juice, heat through. Adjust the consistency by adding more chicken stock – I left mine really thick. Adjust salt/pepper.

[I meant to add flour to the chicken and chiles before adding the stock to pull the sauce together a little bit but forgot completely. It turned out ok. For future reference - Add 2 tbsp flour and stir about before adding the liquids.]

The chiles freeze really well once roasted. I currently have two bags in my freezer - one with hot and one with mild chiles. One of those bags contains individually wrapped chiles while the other one does not. I got sick of it individually wrapping individual chiles. So I guess I have a Hatch green chile block. Once I find a recipe deserving enough, I will pull them out. Until then, I reserve the right to take out the bags and inhale deeply.

~AK

Texas BBQ

One would have to be a fool to visit Texas and not try the barbeque. I am no fool. [Oh if only that were true…]

Barbeque was among my many food requests for my visit to San Antonio. My request was granted the second day I was there with lunch at Grady’s. Such a neat place! Serving Texas style BBQ (as in vinegar, not tomato-based barbeque sauce, I think) since 1948, the room is paneled in wood with heads of things on the wall, true to type. The room is big and open and feels like a cabin in the woods. Totally perfect for a barbeque joint.

The menu is printed on a wall-sized poster in the entry way. It includes the expected standards – barbequed beef brisket, ribs, chicken, chicken fried steak (I swear I will try that one of these days, if only because of the ridiculous name), fried catfish and sausages. Once you have made up your mind of which large plate of protein you would like, you walk a bit to place your order with the cashier. There is a tin trough full of iced beer on the right. By the way Lonestar, a Texas beer, is pretty good!

The cashier hands you a beeper thingie that vibrates when your order is up. And by vibrate I mean that it can be used as a jackhammer. You wait for the order at a table of your choosing and when the time comes, you pretend not to have been scared senseless by the sudden shaking of your entire body by the beeper thingie. Not entirely unpleasant, really.

So you know how I said that I am no fool? Well, I was joking. I thought I should make some attempt to inject nutrients into my meal and ordered a side salad with my chopped brisket sandwich. Ha. This is not the place to order a salad. I knew this, and yet persevered in my quest for vegetables. Foolish me.

The portions at Grady’s lean to the side of absurdity, but then again, this is Texas. The brisket was wonderful. The sauce was vinegary and not too sweet, which so many tend to be. There were large chunks of cracked black pepper throughout, which I loved. The beef itself had tons of charred pieces lending bitterness and smokiness. Some of the meat was in chunks, but most of it was shredded. The shredded pieces were drier and almost crunchy while the chunks were soft and tender. The bottom part of the bun dissolved a bit under the barbeque sauce making a neat bread-sauce-beef all mixed together combo. Yum. I think I was eating a good 20 minutes after Anthony and Lara had finished their meals. This is in no way unusual.

Lara had the same thing I did whereas Anthony had the special – barbequed half chicken with pinto beans aaaand something else that I forgot. The chicken was really tender and not overwhelmed by the barbeque sauce – it was allowed to taste like chicken, but bettered by the sauce.



Barbeque was one of the things scratched off my “must eat in Texas” list. Next up: margaritas. Large, potent margaritas. Many margaritas.

Oh, and don't order a salad at a barbeque restaurant in Texas. Just a bit of wisdom for the day.

~AK

So Very Many Tastes of Texas

I have a food hangover. My food hangover may or may not be mixed in with the other kind of hangover but that is, for the moment, irrelevant. I spent four wonderful days visiting friends in San Antonio (very neat place). We did a lot of eating - this may be an understatement. Every moment of the day was scheduled around when and where we should eat, which worked out to be as fantastic as it sounds. My Texas food experience was in no way limited to restaurants - we also went to an awesome farmers market and a couple of grocery stores that made my local Stop and Shop look like a 7-11. And there may have been a mechanical bull thrown in sometime during the weekend. I will say no more.

This is a partial (if you can believe that) record of the things that I brought back from my trip. Only by some minor miracle did I avoid having to take a second suitcase home with me to fit all the food that I bought while there. Somehow, I sat on my suitcase long enough to shut it. The poor thing may never be the same. I will get to all the restaurants in a later post.

I have never seen fresh dates before. Frankly, I thought fresh dates were a bit of a myth. These were grown locally in the Austin area (Hill Country, I think). The nice farmer/vendor man was patient with us cityfolk in explaining that dates are edible in all stages of ripeness, with the taste of the date evolving as they ripen. Green dates taste nothing like the fully ripe ones. When green, they are crunchy and somewhat mealy in texture (not in a bad way). The taste is grassy and floral, and lacks the molasses syrup note of the dates that I am most familiar with (the ones sold gummy and sticky). The dates in the picture should be fully ripe in about 2 weeks at which time they will be brown and soft. Unfortunately, the sight of fresh dates left me discombobulated enough to have forgotten to ask what variety of dates I was holding in my excited little hands. Any ideas? I haven’t yet decided what I will do with the dates once they are ripe, but I am thinking about something involving, not surprisingly, cheese.

Although this looks like an apple, it is not. It is in fact a cross between a pear and an apple which I will from now on refer to as prapple, since I don’t know what it’s actually called. This pretty prapple (hee) was raised by Lara and Anthony’s next door neighbors on an actual tree that is growing in their actual yard. They made their own fruit! How cool is that? As an aside, I really need to get out of the city more. Trees bearing fruit should not seem as much of a novelty as they do to me. I have yet to taste the prapple, but I am assuming that it will taste like a cross between an apple and, umm, pear - at least that’s what Anthony said.

[Just had the prapple - OMG it's so good. It has the texture of an Asian pear and all the little regular pear gritties, but tastes more like an apple with a slight pear hint. Very unusual and very good.]

Growing trees with fruit was nothing in shock value compared to growing trees with nuts. This totally blew my mind: Lara’s father grew these pecans on his very own pecan trees. Lara very kindly and generously packed some (and by some I mean a giant bag) for me to take back to Boston. These pecans didn’t taste like others I have had. I first tasted almond! The second wave of taste was more reminiscent of the familiar pecan but a little earthier. So very good. I am now completely ashamed for thinking myself a stud for growing basil on my kitchen windowsill. People grow prapples and pecans! Still can’t believe it.

The food gifts only got more impressive from there. If I understand this correctly, these are dried, ripe Hatch chiles from Mesilla, New Mexico. I have my eye on a couple of recipes for these pretty pretty chiles – my first effort will definitely be pozole (New Mexican chili).

This green chile is a less ripe version of the red chile above. I was lucky enough to be visiting Texas during the super short season for Hatch green chiles. These were roasted at the most giant Whole Foods in Austin the day I left to go back to Boston. Much (much) more on these fabulous and impossible to acquire (on the East coast) chiles later.

The last for this post, although in no way last of all the things I brought back with me, are dried hibiscus flowers from Mexico (Flor de Jamaica). Karkade is big in Texas –a deep red hibiscus tea that can be supplemented with sugar, ginger, and other flavorings, served either hot or cold. The tea is tart and very refreshing, especially on the 102F Texas summer days (that actually sounds a lot worse than it is, although I am told that it is about to get much much hotter. Scary). This may be an important note – in addition to being very high in Vitamin C, hibiscus tea is also a natural diuretic.

So that’s it for the partial list of things I brought back. I didn’t mention raw honey from Round Rock Honey Company, two kinds of Vosges chocolate, salsa from New Mexico (thank you again, Anthony and Lara), beef jerky, yogurt starter that I haven’t been able to find anywhere, and special cream to get rid of the onion and garlic smell on your hands (total turn off). Whew. I have a feeling that I may not be getting rid of my food hangover any time soon.

I highly recommend a trip to Texas, especially if you have two completely awesome people to eat with you.

~AK

P.S. If you are up for a truly surreal yet ridiculously entertaining evening, go here.