i wonder how many people get the urge to say "stelllllaaaaaaaaaah!" when they come to this restaurant. of course when they do get this urge, they squash it because they're young and hip, and besides, stella, in the south end on washington street, hasn't been open for that long. stella is a scant five minutes from my sister's apartment, and despite the service missteps and a few food mishaps, it's still a place i'd go back to (when they're a little older and have ironed out all their little problems. overall, it's a great place that's not too expensive (a little expensive for college students - entrees are 16-22).
entering the restaurant makes me feel like i should be on cape cod or martha's vineyard. the restaurant is white inside, and the waiters are all wearing white - i felt like there should be sand on the floor. the restaurant has a slightly odd layout because it spans doorways on a corner, so we walked through a passageway, past the kitchen, to get to our table.
one of the things that my sister remarked later in the meal was that she didn't know how the restaurant was going to be able to maintain its prices. i have no idea either. the tables are granite-topped, the silverware is villeroy and boch...let's not even ask where the plates are from (not quite tactless enough to pick up the plate and peer at the label on the underside). even our seating arrangement was awkward - far too much space for a party of five.
we started with the mussels and the caesar salad. the mussels were pretty good - i'm starting to actually like them again - but there was no serving spoon. every time someone took a mussel, they would look longingly at the rich, delicious-looking broth at the bottom of the bowl, and wish they had a spoon. but we didn't have one, and the waitstaff didn't notice, either. on the bright side, the caesar salad is probably the best one i've ever had in my life; the dressing was fantastic, the greens were crunchy and tasted clean, and they were perfectly dressed. my one beef - who serves croutons as a huge thing? the thing i like about salads is the bite-sized aspect of them - for me, a salad includes only pieces that can be stabbed by a fork and easily deposited in my mouth. i have no desire to look like the clumsy oaf who can't help but get salad dressing everywhere. so the crouton was in one piece - how does one cut a crouton that's one piece? how can anyone think that's convenient? food that is beautiful but illogical really bothers me; perhaps it's the engineer in me. the quality of the rest of the salad, though, definitely made up for the crouton blunder. and the crouton, while difficult to eat (and a bit too toasted for my taste), tasted fantastic.
i had a similar mixed reaction to the main course. i had the truffled fettuccine, which had an asparagus cream sauce and a poached egg. i realize now that i should have sent the thing back. i loved the fettuccine, the truffled aspect of it, and the asparagus cream sauce - these were all absolutely outstanding, bold, heady, and perfectly balanced. but the egg was not poached. i don't know who ok'ed sending that thing out with an egregiously over-poached egg on it, but i hope they either fixed their problems or got fired. my mother's pork chop milanese, however, was fantastic, although i don't think it was what she was expecting (it's basically like wienerspaetzle) - the pork chop was great with the tomato sauce, which tasted really fresh. likewise, my sister's mushroom pizza was really good - crust crispier and thinner than an emma's pizza, but not too trendily thin, and the mushrooms were great. it was oversalted - as food often is nowadays, oddly enough - but the mushrooms were very adequately earthy.
for dessert, we split a couple of cannoli and a piece of tiramisu. the tiramisu, i'm happy to note, was real tiramisu, down to the mascarpone cream. it was also pretty well balanced in terms of coffee and rum. the cannoli were a letdown; the cannoli cream was a little runny and too vanilla-y - they just didn't taste italian (whatever that means).
i don't know how this happened - the service was adequate, if spotty, until we wanted the check. all of us were falling asleep and my parents were heading home that night, so we asked for the check. we got it the second time we asked, and we got our server to pick up the check when we finally asked. and then, finally, we left.
all in all, i would go back to stella - the memory of the fettuccine is that good - but by the time i go back, i hope that all of their service problems will have been resolved.
06 juin 2005
review: meet and greet at the green street grill
not really a meet and greet, but more of a we-love-you-please-mingle party of those of us who are graduating and our families - miriam, shaunna, austin, carrie, jessica, and me, joined by keith and v. we settled on the green street grill as it was one of the few places with enough space left to accommodate us. it's caribbean/soul food type stuff, and i'd heard of it and never been there before. sadly, josh couldn't come because it wasn't the type of food his grandparents would stand for.
it was a bit difficult to make our parents mingle; i think the parents most willing to move were miriam's parents, unsurprisingly. mine did too - my mom sat with me, carrie, keith, jessica and shaunna, while my father sat with carrie's parents.
green street grill is probably the type of place i'd come back to with my friends, rather than my parents - it's definitely more of a younger crowd place, though i saw a few people i knew with their parents. i had a maple-brined pork chop with collard greens, some sort of bean-and-salt-pork thing, and corn grits, as well as a side of fried yucca. the pork chop was enormous, but i was really hungry and ate the whole thing. the fried yucca was fantastic - just the way i had remembered yucca from luciano's restaurant (which is now closed). it was crispy on the outside, with a perfect amount of deep-fried-crust, and came with a "mojito" dipping sauce, which was slightly sour, slightly spicy, and quite good with it. the grits were great with the pork chop and the bean thing, but i think i'm not a fan of collard greens, sadly.
and that's where the story ends, because we didn't do dessert (too full!). ok, more about the pork chop. i'm not so sure about that maple-brined business, but it was perfectly done inside, nice and thick, and wonderfully crusty on the outside. mmm...i would go there again, though i think it was a bit too exotic for my mother.
it was a bit difficult to make our parents mingle; i think the parents most willing to move were miriam's parents, unsurprisingly. mine did too - my mom sat with me, carrie, keith, jessica and shaunna, while my father sat with carrie's parents.
green street grill is probably the type of place i'd come back to with my friends, rather than my parents - it's definitely more of a younger crowd place, though i saw a few people i knew with their parents. i had a maple-brined pork chop with collard greens, some sort of bean-and-salt-pork thing, and corn grits, as well as a side of fried yucca. the pork chop was enormous, but i was really hungry and ate the whole thing. the fried yucca was fantastic - just the way i had remembered yucca from luciano's restaurant (which is now closed). it was crispy on the outside, with a perfect amount of deep-fried-crust, and came with a "mojito" dipping sauce, which was slightly sour, slightly spicy, and quite good with it. the grits were great with the pork chop and the bean thing, but i think i'm not a fan of collard greens, sadly.
and that's where the story ends, because we didn't do dessert (too full!). ok, more about the pork chop. i'm not so sure about that maple-brined business, but it was perfectly done inside, nice and thick, and wonderfully crusty on the outside. mmm...i would go there again, though i think it was a bit too exotic for my mother.
05 juin 2005
review: moving day dinner (central kitchen)
central kitchen / 567 massachusetts avenue / cambridge ma / 617-491-5599 / sun-wed 5:30-1am, thu-sat 5:30-2am / reservations accepted for parties of 6+ (recommended) / entrees moderately expensive ($18-25)
celina and i have been trying to make indian food together for approximately four months now. as we'll be in different cities for the summer, we'll have to postpone that dinner for a few more months. on the bright side, we did manage to make it out to dinner on moving day. having spent the entire day moving stuff from lmf and my sister's apartment, i was absolutely gross and sweaty. despite this fact, we wandered into central kitchen, which i've always wanted to try, and which i never had until now.
the interior of the restaurant is much nicer than the outside, which is a bit drab and looks very much like a slightly rundown, community-type neighborhood place. or rather, not rundown, but well worn from a lot of use. the interior is mod in a welcoming kind of way, with a bar surrounded by tables. the tables are chrome with dents in them - you have to see them to like them as much as i do, probably. the lighting is fairly dim, but since the walls are in warm dark colors, it's somehow just right to be completely flattering. we were sitting between the bar and the street entrance, but there's also a back area next to the back of the bar that has these fantastic lighting fixtures that are part lightbulbs, part lit-up old wine bottles.
the tables were set with regular silverware, then tiny, tiny water glasses - basically juice glasses. i got the chopped salad - arugula, a lemon dressing, bits of lemon, some sort of pancetta-like bacon-y thing, pea tendrils, and asparagus. every single restaurant i've been to recently has asparagus on its menu. as i love asparagus, this is a good thing (also, i very much appreciate that morels have been in season while i'm here). it was pretty good, though the greens were a bit tough. the lemon was quite nice, and the entire thing was on the large side.
our entrees were absolutely enormous. the prices are in the high teens and low twenties, but the portions are enormous (ie, large enough to feed one rower who's just had practice, or one short asian girl twice). i had roast chicken (seeing a trend here? it's the at-an-expensive-restaurant-but-not-wealthy-enough-to-afford-the-steak syndrome), which came with mashed potatoes, green beans, and caramelized vidalia onions. mmm....i do love caramelized onions. oh! and it had morels...not as good as the ones at craigie street, but they were morels, and that's all that mattered. not the most earth-shattering entree ever, but it was good stuff. oh, about enormous - so i got not one chicken quarter, but two. it wasn't even just the quarter - it was a leg attached to a breast, actually. consequently i had snack food for the next three days as i finished moving.
i was so full by the time i finished half of my entree that celina and i split dessert - blueberry bread pudding with a white chocolate sauce. it was an outstanding combination, and probably the most sophisticated part if you care about that kind of thing. overall, central kitchen is a great neighborhood place - the type of place where you could go frequently, which isn't too expensive (for the amount of food and the quality). it would be a normal neighborhood place without the decor, which definitely makes it a better place to hang out in.
celina and i have been trying to make indian food together for approximately four months now. as we'll be in different cities for the summer, we'll have to postpone that dinner for a few more months. on the bright side, we did manage to make it out to dinner on moving day. having spent the entire day moving stuff from lmf and my sister's apartment, i was absolutely gross and sweaty. despite this fact, we wandered into central kitchen, which i've always wanted to try, and which i never had until now.
the interior of the restaurant is much nicer than the outside, which is a bit drab and looks very much like a slightly rundown, community-type neighborhood place. or rather, not rundown, but well worn from a lot of use. the interior is mod in a welcoming kind of way, with a bar surrounded by tables. the tables are chrome with dents in them - you have to see them to like them as much as i do, probably. the lighting is fairly dim, but since the walls are in warm dark colors, it's somehow just right to be completely flattering. we were sitting between the bar and the street entrance, but there's also a back area next to the back of the bar that has these fantastic lighting fixtures that are part lightbulbs, part lit-up old wine bottles.
the tables were set with regular silverware, then tiny, tiny water glasses - basically juice glasses. i got the chopped salad - arugula, a lemon dressing, bits of lemon, some sort of pancetta-like bacon-y thing, pea tendrils, and asparagus. every single restaurant i've been to recently has asparagus on its menu. as i love asparagus, this is a good thing (also, i very much appreciate that morels have been in season while i'm here). it was pretty good, though the greens were a bit tough. the lemon was quite nice, and the entire thing was on the large side.
our entrees were absolutely enormous. the prices are in the high teens and low twenties, but the portions are enormous (ie, large enough to feed one rower who's just had practice, or one short asian girl twice). i had roast chicken (seeing a trend here? it's the at-an-expensive-restaurant-but-not-wealthy-enough-to-afford-the-steak syndrome), which came with mashed potatoes, green beans, and caramelized vidalia onions. mmm....i do love caramelized onions. oh! and it had morels...not as good as the ones at craigie street, but they were morels, and that's all that mattered. not the most earth-shattering entree ever, but it was good stuff. oh, about enormous - so i got not one chicken quarter, but two. it wasn't even just the quarter - it was a leg attached to a breast, actually. consequently i had snack food for the next three days as i finished moving.
i was so full by the time i finished half of my entree that celina and i split dessert - blueberry bread pudding with a white chocolate sauce. it was an outstanding combination, and probably the most sophisticated part if you care about that kind of thing. overall, central kitchen is a great neighborhood place - the type of place where you could go frequently, which isn't too expensive (for the amount of food and the quality). it would be a normal neighborhood place without the decor, which definitely makes it a better place to hang out in.
26 mai 2005
review: wind, rain, and almost hail... (craigie street bistrot)
craigie street bistrot / 5 craigie circle / cambridge ma / 617-497-5511 / tu-thur 6-10pm, fri-sat 5:30-10:30pm, sun 5:30-10pm / reservations recommended / entrees expensive (dinner will run you $35-70)
goodness! not that i really care, but i can assure you that after having been out in the rain on the way to and from dinner, my hair has lost everything from the post-haircut blowout except for that intoxicating stuff they spray on it at the salon i go to.
today was probably the last stop on jessica's and my restaurant tour (the money has run out, sadly - must pay my rent), and it was craigie street bistrot. craigie street bistrot had been my favorite restaurant in cambridge, and i'm happy to report that it remains my favorite restaurant.
what i had liked the first time i went to craigie street bistrot (it was sometime last fall or the one before that, with a bunch of french house people) was the simplicity of the food and the flawless preparation (a point to which our waitress at no 9 park agreed, having previously worked there). when i was last there, i had the pork rillettes (a kind of pate-confit type thing) and the roast chicken, and then we split a bunch of desserts. i remember the chicken as being the best chicken that i'd ever had; the desserts were also memorable for this reason - good ingredients.
i wasn't disappointed this time, either. jessica was a bit put off by the way our waiter and the menu were in our faces about fresh local produce; i suppose i'm just used to it now. i'm afraid i've been spoiled on good food since i last went to craigie street bistrot, so that i am getting accustomed to really good chicken. i started with the "crispy pork confit," a sort of country pate that's reminiscent of the appetizer i had at aujourd'hui. it was crispy by virtue of being pan-seared, and came with a poached egg on top, and in a shallow pool of french lentil (lentilles de puy) puree. oh, and morels - it came with morels. i love morels to death; they are my favorite mushrooms. i suppose there was a bit more pretention than usual at the restaurant - the girl who brought me my first course told me that i would maximize my utility if i broke the egg over the whole thing. as if i would have done anything else. and seeing as the egg was on top of everything, it wasn't possible to take any other course of action.
as a second course, i had the chicken. it still had fennel with it, but it was much more of a background thing; the previous time i had had it, fennel was the main vegetable with it. this chicken was roasted with tarragon (and it must have been a lot of tarragon! i had roasted chickens with tarragon about a month ago, and it was nowhere as tarragon-y). this chicken came with roasted potatoes and more mushrooms, and had a relish-type thing of golden raisins, capers, and pine nuts. it was quite good, especially the combination of golden raisins and capers - i'll have to remember that one.
and finally, for dessert, jessica had dessert grits (i forget exactly how it went) and i had the chocolate tart with white chocolate ice cream. as i had ascertained from my previous visit, the ice cream at craigie street is the best ice cream i've ever had, if not the most imaginative (the best ice cream flavor i've ever had was blueberry at tosci's when i was in eighth grade). the chocolate tart was fantastic - very, very chocolaty, and no weird floral or fruity notes. the crust was also the most delicate, thinnest crust i've ever seen on a tart - that perfect shade of golden. it was basically crispy butter, with a dab or two of flour. but it was great with the chocolate. and add the white chocolate and you have the butter, the bitter-smoky, and the softly sweet.
i would say that nothing could beat the magical experience that was my first visit to craigie street, as that visit was probably the first time i really spent a lot of money on dinner at a restaurant. but this second time was great (oh, i also had a kir royale, which was pretty good). jessica had this sweet red dessert wine with her dessert, which wasn't as good as the one we had in our wine tasting class, but which was still quite good. looking at craigie street's wine list on their website, i believe it was the 2001 domaine du traginer banyuls "rimage" (roussillon). i think i also just like the three-course dining experience in general; to me it seems to be the right way to have dinner. the american in me takes hold when i am in studio and unable to devote real time to food other than semi-palatable subs and other prepared foods from star market, but the francophile in me always aspires towards three courses.
oh, so the wind, rain, and almost hail...i had been intending to get a new umbrella and after this visit i definitely need one. i set my umbrella down on the floor in the house 5 elevator lounge, and it looks like it's some sort of sculpture - "destroyed umbrella rising out of ground." it was so windy that my umbrella finally kicked the bucket; we got totally soaked on our walk from the kendall T stop, but caught saferide back, luckily. we intended to stop by betsy's room-warming party, but got to the area too late, and it was raining so hard we conceded defeat and went home.
goodness! not that i really care, but i can assure you that after having been out in the rain on the way to and from dinner, my hair has lost everything from the post-haircut blowout except for that intoxicating stuff they spray on it at the salon i go to.
today was probably the last stop on jessica's and my restaurant tour (the money has run out, sadly - must pay my rent), and it was craigie street bistrot. craigie street bistrot had been my favorite restaurant in cambridge, and i'm happy to report that it remains my favorite restaurant.
what i had liked the first time i went to craigie street bistrot (it was sometime last fall or the one before that, with a bunch of french house people) was the simplicity of the food and the flawless preparation (a point to which our waitress at no 9 park agreed, having previously worked there). when i was last there, i had the pork rillettes (a kind of pate-confit type thing) and the roast chicken, and then we split a bunch of desserts. i remember the chicken as being the best chicken that i'd ever had; the desserts were also memorable for this reason - good ingredients.
i wasn't disappointed this time, either. jessica was a bit put off by the way our waiter and the menu were in our faces about fresh local produce; i suppose i'm just used to it now. i'm afraid i've been spoiled on good food since i last went to craigie street bistrot, so that i am getting accustomed to really good chicken. i started with the "crispy pork confit," a sort of country pate that's reminiscent of the appetizer i had at aujourd'hui. it was crispy by virtue of being pan-seared, and came with a poached egg on top, and in a shallow pool of french lentil (lentilles de puy) puree. oh, and morels - it came with morels. i love morels to death; they are my favorite mushrooms. i suppose there was a bit more pretention than usual at the restaurant - the girl who brought me my first course told me that i would maximize my utility if i broke the egg over the whole thing. as if i would have done anything else. and seeing as the egg was on top of everything, it wasn't possible to take any other course of action.
as a second course, i had the chicken. it still had fennel with it, but it was much more of a background thing; the previous time i had had it, fennel was the main vegetable with it. this chicken was roasted with tarragon (and it must have been a lot of tarragon! i had roasted chickens with tarragon about a month ago, and it was nowhere as tarragon-y). this chicken came with roasted potatoes and more mushrooms, and had a relish-type thing of golden raisins, capers, and pine nuts. it was quite good, especially the combination of golden raisins and capers - i'll have to remember that one.
and finally, for dessert, jessica had dessert grits (i forget exactly how it went) and i had the chocolate tart with white chocolate ice cream. as i had ascertained from my previous visit, the ice cream at craigie street is the best ice cream i've ever had, if not the most imaginative (the best ice cream flavor i've ever had was blueberry at tosci's when i was in eighth grade). the chocolate tart was fantastic - very, very chocolaty, and no weird floral or fruity notes. the crust was also the most delicate, thinnest crust i've ever seen on a tart - that perfect shade of golden. it was basically crispy butter, with a dab or two of flour. but it was great with the chocolate. and add the white chocolate and you have the butter, the bitter-smoky, and the softly sweet.
i would say that nothing could beat the magical experience that was my first visit to craigie street, as that visit was probably the first time i really spent a lot of money on dinner at a restaurant. but this second time was great (oh, i also had a kir royale, which was pretty good). jessica had this sweet red dessert wine with her dessert, which wasn't as good as the one we had in our wine tasting class, but which was still quite good. looking at craigie street's wine list on their website, i believe it was the 2001 domaine du traginer banyuls "rimage" (roussillon). i think i also just like the three-course dining experience in general; to me it seems to be the right way to have dinner. the american in me takes hold when i am in studio and unable to devote real time to food other than semi-palatable subs and other prepared foods from star market, but the francophile in me always aspires towards three courses.
oh, so the wind, rain, and almost hail...i had been intending to get a new umbrella and after this visit i definitely need one. i set my umbrella down on the floor in the house 5 elevator lounge, and it looks like it's some sort of sculpture - "destroyed umbrella rising out of ground." it was so windy that my umbrella finally kicked the bucket; we got totally soaked on our walk from the kendall T stop, but caught saferide back, luckily. we intended to stop by betsy's room-warming party, but got to the area too late, and it was raining so hard we conceded defeat and went home.
previous comment
this is actually a comment to my craigie street bistrot post, from gabriel (fou):
Um, I think you're eating better in Boston than I am in PARIS! Let me tell you about my dining experience Thursday evening (June 2). I was with a friend from the USA on her last of a three-day visit in Paris (followed by a tour of Italy). We met after lunch and went walking and metroing all over the city. Finally, dying of thirst we stopped at a cafe/restaurant in front of the theater "Café de la Gare" (rue du Temple). There was, to our luck, a spare table in the corner of the cobbled courtyard. The neat thing about the courtyard of the "Café de la Gare" is that while sitting and eating you can watch dance students practice through the windows on all four sides of the building that surrounds the courtyard. We simply got a liter of water (Evian of course), plus I got a kir cassis for an apéritif. The time must have passed extremely fast, and as it was still rather bright, I didn't realize how late it was. It was near 10 p.m., but I wanted to go to this place at Montmartre called the Maison Rose. (I should have known better-- I have tremendously bad luck with this restaurant. This incident made the third time that I tried to dine there without success.) I thought we had burned our chance to dine out, because by the time we realized the Maison Rose had finished it was rather late. Luckily, I remembered passing late one night through Les Halles and seeing a block of restaurants that were still open. My memory served me well. We settled down at the restaurant Au Pied du Cochon, one of the few restaurants in Paris open day and night (jour et nuit). As the name suggests, their specialty is pig feet. And yep, I tried their award-winning specialty. We were seated on the terrace, on a fine night with the sky above and a slow street running next to us. Since my friend doesn't drink alcohol, we simply ordered mineral water. We started by studying the menu meticulously. I felt sorry for the anglophones who have to order from the translations-- they have no idea what they are REALLY ordering. Finally, we were ready. I suggested that my friend order mussels, thinking she shouldn't leave Paris without having the ubiquitous "moules, frites" combination. We would split the entrée, escargots de Bourgogne, since she had never had escargots before. On top of this, I told the waiter that I would order the menu for 18 euros. A half-minute later, we have baguette slices and bottle of mineral water brought to us. The baguette, unfortunately, tasted like it had been bought early that morning, but at least it was "baguette tradition" and not the cheaper, normal baguette that restaurants here (even of the same price as Au Pied du Cochon) often try to pass off on you. A few minutes later, a waiter brought of platter of 6 oysters, which really confused me, because I was expecting escargot. I explained to our first waiter that I hadn't ordered oysters. Well, apparently according to his ear, I had: when I asked for menu at "dix-huit euros" (18€), he thought I asked for the menu (at 23€) with an entrée of "six huitres." This is the worst aspect of the French language: so many words and phrases sound the same, you have to be extremely clear and articulate. But oh well, the oysters were making my eyes water with delight, and my friend had never had oysters before, not in France nor elsewhere. When the waiter had brought the oysters to the table he had also brought a red-wine vinegar sauce with shallots--or perhaps onions. I didn't know what it was for, so I finally asked a French-speaking lady at the table next to me. She and the man across from her explained to me that it was for the oysters, to be spooned over them. She was of the opinion that it's better without the sauce, but he, of the opposite opinion, said I must try it like that once. So I did, and agreed with the lady. Finally came the escargots. My friend liked them much better than the oysters. Next, "les plats." I was disappointed because the mussels my friend received were not what I had envisioned. They were already shelled and didn't come in a pot. In fact I should have paid more attention to the menu: "poêlon de moules" does not mean "casserole de moules." Bah, oh well. My plate--while not disappointing--was very unsettling. French fries and big barbecued pig foot--skin, bones, fat, meat, and all. I was puzzled as to where to begin and what parts to eat. Finally, I explained to our waiter I had never had pig feet before, and he explained that all of it is edible--except the bones, of course. Evidemment. It also came with a mustardy sauce, which I discovered alas rather late in the meal went very well with the foot, better with the foot than the fries. And as the restaurant was French, no ketchup for the fries (I didn't actually ask for any though). Through my months in France, I began to get the impression that only Americans know how to do French fries, but the ones from Au Pied du Cochon were on the American par. I had severe problems eating the pig foot. It was simply to resemblant of an animal body part. And the way in which the skin slid and stuck to the meat and bones discouraged me from the beginning from going further. But I bolstered my intrepidation and forked and knived through nearly all of it, down to the three little piggy-toes. The worst thing about pig feet is that there is so much fat. In the end, I left the fattiest portions of my pig foot uneaten. Nonetheless, when he came to clear the plates from the table, my waiter exclaimed--with a real or imagined sense of congratulation--that I had eaten all of it. In humble-driven honesty, I replied, "Nearly all of it." My friend and I decided to split a crème brulée, since she had never had one before. It was the best crème brulée I have ever had since I was first introduced to crème brulée in coming to France. The secret, I think, was declared on the menu: "à la vanille." The touch of real vanilla (you could even see the tiny black seeds) elegantly and deliciously enhanced the sweet flavor of the crème. Finally, the bill: 56 euros, comprising15 escargots, a 1-L bottle of Badoit mineral water, 6 oysters accompanied by four slices of brown bread, a pan of mussels, a plate of fries and a pig foot, a .33 L bottle of Perrier mineral water, and one crème brulée (and French bread, which goes without saying)--between midnight and two in the morning.
Um, I think you're eating better in Boston than I am in PARIS! Let me tell you about my dining experience Thursday evening (June 2). I was with a friend from the USA on her last of a three-day visit in Paris (followed by a tour of Italy). We met after lunch and went walking and metroing all over the city. Finally, dying of thirst we stopped at a cafe/restaurant in front of the theater "Café de la Gare" (rue du Temple). There was, to our luck, a spare table in the corner of the cobbled courtyard. The neat thing about the courtyard of the "Café de la Gare" is that while sitting and eating you can watch dance students practice through the windows on all four sides of the building that surrounds the courtyard. We simply got a liter of water (Evian of course), plus I got a kir cassis for an apéritif. The time must have passed extremely fast, and as it was still rather bright, I didn't realize how late it was. It was near 10 p.m., but I wanted to go to this place at Montmartre called the Maison Rose. (I should have known better-- I have tremendously bad luck with this restaurant. This incident made the third time that I tried to dine there without success.) I thought we had burned our chance to dine out, because by the time we realized the Maison Rose had finished it was rather late. Luckily, I remembered passing late one night through Les Halles and seeing a block of restaurants that were still open. My memory served me well. We settled down at the restaurant Au Pied du Cochon, one of the few restaurants in Paris open day and night (jour et nuit). As the name suggests, their specialty is pig feet. And yep, I tried their award-winning specialty. We were seated on the terrace, on a fine night with the sky above and a slow street running next to us. Since my friend doesn't drink alcohol, we simply ordered mineral water. We started by studying the menu meticulously. I felt sorry for the anglophones who have to order from the translations-- they have no idea what they are REALLY ordering. Finally, we were ready. I suggested that my friend order mussels, thinking she shouldn't leave Paris without having the ubiquitous "moules, frites" combination. We would split the entrée, escargots de Bourgogne, since she had never had escargots before. On top of this, I told the waiter that I would order the menu for 18 euros. A half-minute later, we have baguette slices and bottle of mineral water brought to us. The baguette, unfortunately, tasted like it had been bought early that morning, but at least it was "baguette tradition" and not the cheaper, normal baguette that restaurants here (even of the same price as Au Pied du Cochon) often try to pass off on you. A few minutes later, a waiter brought of platter of 6 oysters, which really confused me, because I was expecting escargot. I explained to our first waiter that I hadn't ordered oysters. Well, apparently according to his ear, I had: when I asked for menu at "dix-huit euros" (18€), he thought I asked for the menu (at 23€) with an entrée of "six huitres." This is the worst aspect of the French language: so many words and phrases sound the same, you have to be extremely clear and articulate. But oh well, the oysters were making my eyes water with delight, and my friend had never had oysters before, not in France nor elsewhere. When the waiter had brought the oysters to the table he had also brought a red-wine vinegar sauce with shallots--or perhaps onions. I didn't know what it was for, so I finally asked a French-speaking lady at the table next to me. She and the man across from her explained to me that it was for the oysters, to be spooned over them. She was of the opinion that it's better without the sauce, but he, of the opposite opinion, said I must try it like that once. So I did, and agreed with the lady. Finally came the escargots. My friend liked them much better than the oysters. Next, "les plats." I was disappointed because the mussels my friend received were not what I had envisioned. They were already shelled and didn't come in a pot. In fact I should have paid more attention to the menu: "poêlon de moules" does not mean "casserole de moules." Bah, oh well. My plate--while not disappointing--was very unsettling. French fries and big barbecued pig foot--skin, bones, fat, meat, and all. I was puzzled as to where to begin and what parts to eat. Finally, I explained to our waiter I had never had pig feet before, and he explained that all of it is edible--except the bones, of course. Evidemment. It also came with a mustardy sauce, which I discovered alas rather late in the meal went very well with the foot, better with the foot than the fries. And as the restaurant was French, no ketchup for the fries (I didn't actually ask for any though). Through my months in France, I began to get the impression that only Americans know how to do French fries, but the ones from Au Pied du Cochon were on the American par. I had severe problems eating the pig foot. It was simply to resemblant of an animal body part. And the way in which the skin slid and stuck to the meat and bones discouraged me from the beginning from going further. But I bolstered my intrepidation and forked and knived through nearly all of it, down to the three little piggy-toes. The worst thing about pig feet is that there is so much fat. In the end, I left the fattiest portions of my pig foot uneaten. Nonetheless, when he came to clear the plates from the table, my waiter exclaimed--with a real or imagined sense of congratulation--that I had eaten all of it. In humble-driven honesty, I replied, "Nearly all of it." My friend and I decided to split a crème brulée, since she had never had one before. It was the best crème brulée I have ever had since I was first introduced to crème brulée in coming to France. The secret, I think, was declared on the menu: "à la vanille." The touch of real vanilla (you could even see the tiny black seeds) elegantly and deliciously enhanced the sweet flavor of the crème. Finally, the bill: 56 euros, comprising15 escargots, a 1-L bottle of Badoit mineral water, 6 oysters accompanied by four slices of brown bread, a pan of mussels, a plate of fries and a pig foot, a .33 L bottle of Perrier mineral water, and one crème brulée (and French bread, which goes without saying)--between midnight and two in the morning.
25 mai 2005
vegetating...
i'd almost forgotten what it's like to sit around with your friends, cook, eat, and vegetate. i suppose i'm really referring to that thing we call "relaxing." fortunately i cut my thumb in studio much less seriously than tim cut his hand, and it's almost all better (translation: i can almost chop things normally). i am currently sitting in the kitchen with allie, alice, luis, jessica, carrie, austin, and v. luis is making a replica of his coatrack in miniature, using popsicle sticks. we're in the middle of cleaning up from dinner - luis' carnitas and salsa, alice's strawberry salad, some corn with shallots, and some of the zucchini bread that alice made for her grandmother. we had tiny grape juice juiceboxes with dinner, as well as water that had frozen on top despite being on the bottom shelf of the drinks fridge; and before the zucchini bread we had a round of popsicles. now we are planning to make cookies and/or bread pudding (with nai's stale bread that has been on the back table for two or three days), then watch a movie. this is the sort of thing we always tried to do on saturdays during term, but never really managed to do more than once or twice because people inevitably got busy - it really makes you miss freshman year and all the free time we used to have.
review: so maybe it wasn't that hard at all... (no 9 park)
i spent the majority of yesterday running errands and having fun. suffice it to say that i have finally settled into the "vacation" part of this whole graduation shebang, although this summer is really a vacation since it won't be work-24-hours-a-day. we'll see how this studio+4 classes+teaching a class works out in the fall - so if i don't update that frequently, forgive me. theoretically i'll be forced to, since i'm out of the wonderful world of communal living (and cooking). and factor in the fact that star market is about 3 minutes away...
anyway, last night jessica, vicky, peter and i hit up no 9 park. i attempted to give the experience a little distance by writing about it today, so i won't be too overly gushy. the gist of this whole thing, though, is that there's definitely a reason for why this is one of the restaurants that always comes up on "top [fill in the blank]" lists.
our reservation was for 8pm, though we left rather early in order to avoid being late. i am unsure of the etiquette regarding punctuality and dinner reservations - in the US they won't hold your reservation forever, but when we were in Lyon several years ago, they held a table for us for almost two hours (we got lost...). anyway, the issue here is more should you be fashionably late, on time, or slightly early? in this case it was fine to be early, because we just sat at the bar until our table was ready (about a half hour). no 9 park is probably the first restaurant i've been to where there's a dedicated bar area (well, ok, there was one at aujourd'hui, too, but the restaurant wasn't busy so it was deserted), as a kind of anteroom to the dining room. usually it's just (literally) a bar. possibly more surprising than anything else, this place was really busy, which is remarkable considering that it was monday night. it was definitely the business crowd, though - more suits than i'd seen in a restaurant in a long time.
the restaurant itself has a very business-appropriate decor - lighting that's both flattering enough for a romantic tryst, but bright enough for business dinners, gray-green walls with dark wood accents everywhere, beautiful flower arrangements. the attention to detail here is great - the kitchen has a wooden sliding door that keeps the back hallway dim, adding to that staid, respectable-establishment, discreet type atmosphere. anyway, kudos to the restaurant for managing a businessy-yet-hip atmosphere - not an easy balance.
while seated at the bar, we indulged in a few cocktails (except for vicky, who is apparently violently allergic to alcohol) - peter had the no 10 (a grapefruit cocktail), i had the pear martini, and jessica had pastis (la muse verte...absinthe anyone?). i don't usually go for fake martinis - which to me is anything besides a classic martini - because, well, they're fake, but this one was far and above the best fake martini i've ever had. it was very much about the pear, with a good balance with the alcohol (grey goose vodka). since i'm slightly allergic to fresh pears, this was also a nice way to still have them, in a very roundabout, tangential way. i have to say that i'm not a huge fan of pastis, or licorice/aniseed in general, though, after having tasted jessica's pastis.
i had assumed that we'd be taking our cocktails ourselves to our tables, but actually, they take them to your table for you, which is quite nice. we were seated near the kitchen (a reflection on our college-ness? but no problem - i love being near the kitchen because you can watch what's going on). jessica later told me she thought the place was cramped, but i thought it was great. then again, i also think the idea of communal tables a la durgin park is fantastic. i see communal tables as being like communal tables at chinese restaurants, when they cram you together to use up empty space and make more money, but without the hostile glares from your tablemates.
we spent a while dithering over what to order. the menu was basically a tasting menu and a regular menu, which was a bit unclear for the caliber of restaurant that we were at - it seemed to emphasize the tasting menu over anything else you might want to order. however, like a fantastic restaurant, the kitchen was willing to (a) make something else from scratch for jessica, since she is vegetarian at school, and (b) serve me an appetizer off the tasting menu. jessica and i had first courses - she had the prune-stuffed gnocchi and i had the frogs legs (cuisses de grenouilles, which is not really "frogs' legs" but translates directly to "frogs' thighs"). i'd had frogs' legs once before, in a soup at pho pasteur, where they were chicken-y and slightly fishy, and rather tough. here, they were great - they came with fava beans, some ultracrispy bacon, a fantastic truffle foam (what is up with foam??? foam, fava beans, and rhubarb are everywhere), and this green, thickish sauce, which i'm not sure what it was and have forgotten since reading the menu. the prune gnocchi were alright, but not really as fantastic as i was hoping for. i think i also had memories of those rice flour balls filled with peanuts or red bean paste that i always had as a kid, so to me they were prune-filled dumplings more than anything else. i like prunes, but not really as an appetizer. quite possibly the foie gras that they left out to make the whole thing vegetarian would have offered that savory counterpoint that they needed.
and finally, main courses! i tried to be adventurous and really, i was partly forced to be, as there was the familiar - chicken, beef, lamb, rabbit - and the less familiar (essentially seafood, which i generally am not a huge fan of). as i kept looking at the menu, i found that i couldn't resist the bass (specifically, "seared black bass"). it came with a bunch of vegetables - mushrooms, fava beans, peas, and baby asparagus. i don't know about you, but i love mushrooms, and morels are my favorite kind of mushrooms. so you see, the bass was calling out to me. peter had the cod, jessica had an assiette of vegetable dishes they prepared for her, and vicky had the squab brochette.
that bass is the best bass i've ever had in my life. i'm not quite sure what was in the sauce, but it was probably just pan juices - fantastic, flavorful ones. the bass was perfectly cooked, with this wonderfully crispy skin, and vegetables underneath. have i mentioned that i love mushrooms? i was so pleasantly surprised, and actually didn't manage to finish the entire thing - it seemed that there was just slightly more than the usual portion of fish that they serve at these expensive restaurants, which is just a reflection of the type (multiple-course) of dining they're expecting you to do.
and finally, dessert. no meal is complete without dessert (ok, no dinner is complete without dessert). period. as we've gone to more restaurants, jessica and i have come to agree that it's always the most imaginative part of the menu, and the part of the menu that can be the most imaginative, just based on the way that people eat, and their comfort levels. no 9 park did not disappoint. we had seen the beautiful wooden cheese cart go to the table in front of ours, and it was tempting, but we felt we couldn't do both cheese and dessert - both stomachs and wallets said no. peter had the bananas foster (banana pop, peanut nougatine, rum sorbet, beignet); i had the black pepper cheesecake (pineapple, lime sorbet); jessica had the rhubarb rose vacherin (with "consomme"); and vicky had the tarte au chocolat (kumquats and persimmons, i think).
desserts are a hit here - i would come here just for dessert. the chocolate tart (not really a tart - more of a mousse on top of a cake) is one of the few chocolate desserts i've ever liked at a restaurant, the only other one i can remember right now being the milk chocolate panna cotta i had at pigalle. chocolate desserts, in general, never have the intensity that i want them to have - they're always a bit too weak, fruity, flowery, or something that is just not chocolate. this is the criticism i have for scharffenberger chocolate, which i've tried several times and dislike every time. i favor callebaut in cooking, and would try valrhona if it weren't so darned expensive! i do use valrhona cocoa though - it's far and away better than everything else. i asked the waiter what kind of chocolate it was, and it was a complete surprise - el rey. i had tasted el rey a while back when i did that chocolate tasting for the tech, and it didn't rate high. in fact, it may have been the most maligned chocolate i tasted. i'll have to go back to whole foods and get some to taste again.
i didn't taste peter's dessert, but rhubarb-rose is one of those flavor combinations that should be natural, but that you don't realize is so good until you try it. wow. and as for mine, it was really quite good. none of these were perfect 10s, but they were definitely 8s and 9s. the cheesecake was absolutely fantastic - creamy, dense but not too dense...i did want the crust to be a little less soggy, so maybe less sauce on the bottom of the plate would have been good. the black pepper flavor was great, but overpowering after a while - and i have no idea what kind of black peppercorns they use at no 9 park, but they're better than any other peppercorns i've ever had before. the combination of room-temperature cheesecake and cool lime sorbet was absolutely out-of-this-world, though. and the whole thing had tiny chunks of pineapple on the bottom and paper-thin slices of pineapple covering the plate. i don't know about the presentation, really, but that's also the best pineapple i've ever had in my life. we wondered all the while how they got the pineapple so thin - if it was cut by hand, or with a mandoline, or maybe frozen and cut...we have no idea. in general, the cheesecake was good, but that perfect balance wasn't quite there.
no 9 park is definitely not quite the place where one wants to linger. i don't mean this in a bad way; it's simply the clientele (businessmen) that makes it so. as it happened, we spent about 3 1/2 hours there, and it's the sort of place where i think i could linger for a while talking, but not in the same way that one can linger in a french bistro all night. all in all, though, it's fantastic and does everything right. the service is impeccable - friendly, but blending into the background, like the decor of the restaurant itself - you could ask them anything and they'd do it for you.
would i come back? yes, definitely. but i would come back only in certain contexts - because i have to say, maybe i'm spoiled but i love the three-tiered tray they bring you at aujourd'hui and l'espalier full of tiny sweet tidbits, as a way to finish off your meal - and that's part of what encourages you to linger for a long while after you actually finish eating. i think the high ceilings of aujourd'hui make it a bit too formal for linger-style eating, but that's just a personal preference. the lighting there is perfect, as it is at no 9 park, whose decor i like slightly more, probably because it's more minimalist. i think i achieved better balance at no 9 park than at aujourd'hui, but that was probably my choice of courses rather than the restaurants themselves. i still think craigie street bistrot is better than both aujourd'hui and no 9 park, just because of that purity of ingredients and preparation, but no 9 park is pretty damn good. no 9 park is a funny contrast with upstairs on the square - one is this staid, subtly exciting cuisine for the suits and the sophisticated hip, while the other is this wildly eclectic, eccentric place. it's like the new yorker and her boho-chic sister. both are great, but in very different ways.
anyway, last night jessica, vicky, peter and i hit up no 9 park. i attempted to give the experience a little distance by writing about it today, so i won't be too overly gushy. the gist of this whole thing, though, is that there's definitely a reason for why this is one of the restaurants that always comes up on "top [fill in the blank]" lists.
our reservation was for 8pm, though we left rather early in order to avoid being late. i am unsure of the etiquette regarding punctuality and dinner reservations - in the US they won't hold your reservation forever, but when we were in Lyon several years ago, they held a table for us for almost two hours (we got lost...). anyway, the issue here is more should you be fashionably late, on time, or slightly early? in this case it was fine to be early, because we just sat at the bar until our table was ready (about a half hour). no 9 park is probably the first restaurant i've been to where there's a dedicated bar area (well, ok, there was one at aujourd'hui, too, but the restaurant wasn't busy so it was deserted), as a kind of anteroom to the dining room. usually it's just (literally) a bar. possibly more surprising than anything else, this place was really busy, which is remarkable considering that it was monday night. it was definitely the business crowd, though - more suits than i'd seen in a restaurant in a long time.
the restaurant itself has a very business-appropriate decor - lighting that's both flattering enough for a romantic tryst, but bright enough for business dinners, gray-green walls with dark wood accents everywhere, beautiful flower arrangements. the attention to detail here is great - the kitchen has a wooden sliding door that keeps the back hallway dim, adding to that staid, respectable-establishment, discreet type atmosphere. anyway, kudos to the restaurant for managing a businessy-yet-hip atmosphere - not an easy balance.
while seated at the bar, we indulged in a few cocktails (except for vicky, who is apparently violently allergic to alcohol) - peter had the no 10 (a grapefruit cocktail), i had the pear martini, and jessica had pastis (la muse verte...absinthe anyone?). i don't usually go for fake martinis - which to me is anything besides a classic martini - because, well, they're fake, but this one was far and above the best fake martini i've ever had. it was very much about the pear, with a good balance with the alcohol (grey goose vodka). since i'm slightly allergic to fresh pears, this was also a nice way to still have them, in a very roundabout, tangential way. i have to say that i'm not a huge fan of pastis, or licorice/aniseed in general, though, after having tasted jessica's pastis.
i had assumed that we'd be taking our cocktails ourselves to our tables, but actually, they take them to your table for you, which is quite nice. we were seated near the kitchen (a reflection on our college-ness? but no problem - i love being near the kitchen because you can watch what's going on). jessica later told me she thought the place was cramped, but i thought it was great. then again, i also think the idea of communal tables a la durgin park is fantastic. i see communal tables as being like communal tables at chinese restaurants, when they cram you together to use up empty space and make more money, but without the hostile glares from your tablemates.
we spent a while dithering over what to order. the menu was basically a tasting menu and a regular menu, which was a bit unclear for the caliber of restaurant that we were at - it seemed to emphasize the tasting menu over anything else you might want to order. however, like a fantastic restaurant, the kitchen was willing to (a) make something else from scratch for jessica, since she is vegetarian at school, and (b) serve me an appetizer off the tasting menu. jessica and i had first courses - she had the prune-stuffed gnocchi and i had the frogs legs (cuisses de grenouilles, which is not really "frogs' legs" but translates directly to "frogs' thighs"). i'd had frogs' legs once before, in a soup at pho pasteur, where they were chicken-y and slightly fishy, and rather tough. here, they were great - they came with fava beans, some ultracrispy bacon, a fantastic truffle foam (what is up with foam??? foam, fava beans, and rhubarb are everywhere), and this green, thickish sauce, which i'm not sure what it was and have forgotten since reading the menu. the prune gnocchi were alright, but not really as fantastic as i was hoping for. i think i also had memories of those rice flour balls filled with peanuts or red bean paste that i always had as a kid, so to me they were prune-filled dumplings more than anything else. i like prunes, but not really as an appetizer. quite possibly the foie gras that they left out to make the whole thing vegetarian would have offered that savory counterpoint that they needed.
and finally, main courses! i tried to be adventurous and really, i was partly forced to be, as there was the familiar - chicken, beef, lamb, rabbit - and the less familiar (essentially seafood, which i generally am not a huge fan of). as i kept looking at the menu, i found that i couldn't resist the bass (specifically, "seared black bass"). it came with a bunch of vegetables - mushrooms, fava beans, peas, and baby asparagus. i don't know about you, but i love mushrooms, and morels are my favorite kind of mushrooms. so you see, the bass was calling out to me. peter had the cod, jessica had an assiette of vegetable dishes they prepared for her, and vicky had the squab brochette.
that bass is the best bass i've ever had in my life. i'm not quite sure what was in the sauce, but it was probably just pan juices - fantastic, flavorful ones. the bass was perfectly cooked, with this wonderfully crispy skin, and vegetables underneath. have i mentioned that i love mushrooms? i was so pleasantly surprised, and actually didn't manage to finish the entire thing - it seemed that there was just slightly more than the usual portion of fish that they serve at these expensive restaurants, which is just a reflection of the type (multiple-course) of dining they're expecting you to do.
and finally, dessert. no meal is complete without dessert (ok, no dinner is complete without dessert). period. as we've gone to more restaurants, jessica and i have come to agree that it's always the most imaginative part of the menu, and the part of the menu that can be the most imaginative, just based on the way that people eat, and their comfort levels. no 9 park did not disappoint. we had seen the beautiful wooden cheese cart go to the table in front of ours, and it was tempting, but we felt we couldn't do both cheese and dessert - both stomachs and wallets said no. peter had the bananas foster (banana pop, peanut nougatine, rum sorbet, beignet); i had the black pepper cheesecake (pineapple, lime sorbet); jessica had the rhubarb rose vacherin (with "consomme"); and vicky had the tarte au chocolat (kumquats and persimmons, i think).
desserts are a hit here - i would come here just for dessert. the chocolate tart (not really a tart - more of a mousse on top of a cake) is one of the few chocolate desserts i've ever liked at a restaurant, the only other one i can remember right now being the milk chocolate panna cotta i had at pigalle. chocolate desserts, in general, never have the intensity that i want them to have - they're always a bit too weak, fruity, flowery, or something that is just not chocolate. this is the criticism i have for scharffenberger chocolate, which i've tried several times and dislike every time. i favor callebaut in cooking, and would try valrhona if it weren't so darned expensive! i do use valrhona cocoa though - it's far and away better than everything else. i asked the waiter what kind of chocolate it was, and it was a complete surprise - el rey. i had tasted el rey a while back when i did that chocolate tasting for the tech, and it didn't rate high. in fact, it may have been the most maligned chocolate i tasted. i'll have to go back to whole foods and get some to taste again.
i didn't taste peter's dessert, but rhubarb-rose is one of those flavor combinations that should be natural, but that you don't realize is so good until you try it. wow. and as for mine, it was really quite good. none of these were perfect 10s, but they were definitely 8s and 9s. the cheesecake was absolutely fantastic - creamy, dense but not too dense...i did want the crust to be a little less soggy, so maybe less sauce on the bottom of the plate would have been good. the black pepper flavor was great, but overpowering after a while - and i have no idea what kind of black peppercorns they use at no 9 park, but they're better than any other peppercorns i've ever had before. the combination of room-temperature cheesecake and cool lime sorbet was absolutely out-of-this-world, though. and the whole thing had tiny chunks of pineapple on the bottom and paper-thin slices of pineapple covering the plate. i don't know about the presentation, really, but that's also the best pineapple i've ever had in my life. we wondered all the while how they got the pineapple so thin - if it was cut by hand, or with a mandoline, or maybe frozen and cut...we have no idea. in general, the cheesecake was good, but that perfect balance wasn't quite there.
no 9 park is definitely not quite the place where one wants to linger. i don't mean this in a bad way; it's simply the clientele (businessmen) that makes it so. as it happened, we spent about 3 1/2 hours there, and it's the sort of place where i think i could linger for a while talking, but not in the same way that one can linger in a french bistro all night. all in all, though, it's fantastic and does everything right. the service is impeccable - friendly, but blending into the background, like the decor of the restaurant itself - you could ask them anything and they'd do it for you.
would i come back? yes, definitely. but i would come back only in certain contexts - because i have to say, maybe i'm spoiled but i love the three-tiered tray they bring you at aujourd'hui and l'espalier full of tiny sweet tidbits, as a way to finish off your meal - and that's part of what encourages you to linger for a long while after you actually finish eating. i think the high ceilings of aujourd'hui make it a bit too formal for linger-style eating, but that's just a personal preference. the lighting there is perfect, as it is at no 9 park, whose decor i like slightly more, probably because it's more minimalist. i think i achieved better balance at no 9 park than at aujourd'hui, but that was probably my choice of courses rather than the restaurants themselves. i still think craigie street bistrot is better than both aujourd'hui and no 9 park, just because of that purity of ingredients and preparation, but no 9 park is pretty damn good. no 9 park is a funny contrast with upstairs on the square - one is this staid, subtly exciting cuisine for the suits and the sophisticated hip, while the other is this wildly eclectic, eccentric place. it's like the new yorker and her boho-chic sister. both are great, but in very different ways.
22 mai 2005
review: that difficult work-to-no-work transition (upstairs on the square)
i'm somewhat at a loss because i've gone from such a high level of production (final review) to nothing. well, if "nothing" means "eventual packing." i feel as though i should be relaxing, but am finding it difficult to do because i'm still coming off the mad dash that is my mental state during finals. it's like trying to brake when driving a freight train full of lead weights.
well, at any rate, jessica and i are determined to hit up some restaurants before she leaves for california and then oxford, so we began our culinary trek today with brunch at upstairs on the square.
first of all, the entrance is on the side, not at the top of the stairs like one would surmise upon glancing at the front of the restaurant. the inside of the restaurant strikes a balance between being designed by women, and being feminine - and luckily, it's the right balance. the room is green with gold accents, with every trendy lighting fixture you can think of, and random details everywhere, like a tiny balcony to the left of the bar, an alice-in-wonderland type of mantel and mirror on the south wall, and "go red sox" painted onto the mirrors above the bar (plus a huge wide-screen TV perched on top of the back of a banquette, ostensibly for red sox games). as i look around, i spot what is the best table i've ever seen in a restaurant, ever - a tiny table tucked into an oddly-shaped nook under a window, big enough for two people. so, if you go there on a date, that is where you should sit. it's on the side of the room opposite from the mantel, closer to the kitchen side.
and of course, there's the food. we went there for brunch, so i think the food was a little less imaginative overal than dinner tends to be - it had the typical french toast, salmon, bagels, omelettes, etc. the attention to detail was probably what made the food so good. i would say that i wasn't totally knocked out, but i was more than pleased and would go back. dinner is probably even better. what also made the food good was flawless preparation - which is also what makes craigie street bistrot (my favorite restaurant in boston and cambridge) so good. while jessica and i waited for shaunna, we were brought a basket with little breakfast-y tidbits - the breakfast version of the breadbasket. everything was, of course, in miniature, and was quite good. there was a tiny chive-cheese scone, banana-chocolate chip muffins (but the banana was very subtle...it took me a few minutes to realize that it was banana. or, rather, jessica said "banana!" and i suddenly realized that that was the flavor i couldn't place), a couple slices of pound cake, and a couple slices of spice cake (very molasses-y). as for first courses, i started with the muesli, which was bits of granola (house-made, of course), assorted nuts (cashews and..macadamias?), and some raspberries. wow, those raspberries were good. the yogurt was also fabulous. anyway, i don't usually like muesli but i did like this one. i have rarely had fried potatoes that good - and you would think that they're a very simple thing to do, but i've had the whole range of fried potatoes, from grim to transcendent. i would say that these were fairly close to transcendent - crispy on the outside, and somehow perfectly balanced, herbs-wise. maybe my palate is too undiscerning, but the steak (oh, so i had the steak and eggs) was good but not particularly spectacular. it was cooked perfectly, though (rare, as all red meat should be), and had some sort of relish/mayonnaise-consistency type thing on it which was spicy and a nice counterpoint to the steak. the eggs? eh. i don't think i'm such a fan of steak and eggs together. in general, though, i don't really go for typical breakfast foods at breakfast. i would much rather have cold pizza than cereal, for example.
the high point, as it always seems to be for me, was dessert. we were all full, but couldn't resist the dessert menu. i do believe the dessert menu was the most creative part of the menu, with things like a coocnut panna cotta (ok, not so exciting), lemon custard cake with rhubarb (rhubarb! i love rhubarb!), cornmeal upside down plum cake (oh, plum cake...), and a couple other things. but shaunna and i eyed the butterscotch pudding and went with it. jessica got the panna cotta despite the gelatin. let me just say that that pudding is the best pudding i have ever had in my life. or, at least, the best butterscotch pudding i have ever had in my life. my other pudding high points: the best recipe's double chocolate pudding recipe is the best pudding recipe in the world; and the joy of cooking milk-and-cornstarch vanilla pudding is just fantastic. but this butterscotch pudding was pretty out-of-this-world - silky, creamy, dense but not too desne...oh, i want more just thinking about it. i think the one thing it may have been lacking (and this is a very contentious "may") was some salty counterpoint - in the same way that caramel is a thousand times better if it's slightly salty, a burst of salty something in the pudding would have been fabulous.
all in all, though, upstairs on the square is a fabulous place, and definitely belongs on your to-do-list. i would like to go there for dinner sometime, to see if there's a big difference in the experience. don't forget the dessert!
well, at any rate, jessica and i are determined to hit up some restaurants before she leaves for california and then oxford, so we began our culinary trek today with brunch at upstairs on the square.
first of all, the entrance is on the side, not at the top of the stairs like one would surmise upon glancing at the front of the restaurant. the inside of the restaurant strikes a balance between being designed by women, and being feminine - and luckily, it's the right balance. the room is green with gold accents, with every trendy lighting fixture you can think of, and random details everywhere, like a tiny balcony to the left of the bar, an alice-in-wonderland type of mantel and mirror on the south wall, and "go red sox" painted onto the mirrors above the bar (plus a huge wide-screen TV perched on top of the back of a banquette, ostensibly for red sox games). as i look around, i spot what is the best table i've ever seen in a restaurant, ever - a tiny table tucked into an oddly-shaped nook under a window, big enough for two people. so, if you go there on a date, that is where you should sit. it's on the side of the room opposite from the mantel, closer to the kitchen side.
and of course, there's the food. we went there for brunch, so i think the food was a little less imaginative overal than dinner tends to be - it had the typical french toast, salmon, bagels, omelettes, etc. the attention to detail was probably what made the food so good. i would say that i wasn't totally knocked out, but i was more than pleased and would go back. dinner is probably even better. what also made the food good was flawless preparation - which is also what makes craigie street bistrot (my favorite restaurant in boston and cambridge) so good. while jessica and i waited for shaunna, we were brought a basket with little breakfast-y tidbits - the breakfast version of the breadbasket. everything was, of course, in miniature, and was quite good. there was a tiny chive-cheese scone, banana-chocolate chip muffins (but the banana was very subtle...it took me a few minutes to realize that it was banana. or, rather, jessica said "banana!" and i suddenly realized that that was the flavor i couldn't place), a couple slices of pound cake, and a couple slices of spice cake (very molasses-y). as for first courses, i started with the muesli, which was bits of granola (house-made, of course), assorted nuts (cashews and..macadamias?), and some raspberries. wow, those raspberries were good. the yogurt was also fabulous. anyway, i don't usually like muesli but i did like this one. i have rarely had fried potatoes that good - and you would think that they're a very simple thing to do, but i've had the whole range of fried potatoes, from grim to transcendent. i would say that these were fairly close to transcendent - crispy on the outside, and somehow perfectly balanced, herbs-wise. maybe my palate is too undiscerning, but the steak (oh, so i had the steak and eggs) was good but not particularly spectacular. it was cooked perfectly, though (rare, as all red meat should be), and had some sort of relish/mayonnaise-consistency type thing on it which was spicy and a nice counterpoint to the steak. the eggs? eh. i don't think i'm such a fan of steak and eggs together. in general, though, i don't really go for typical breakfast foods at breakfast. i would much rather have cold pizza than cereal, for example.
the high point, as it always seems to be for me, was dessert. we were all full, but couldn't resist the dessert menu. i do believe the dessert menu was the most creative part of the menu, with things like a coocnut panna cotta (ok, not so exciting), lemon custard cake with rhubarb (rhubarb! i love rhubarb!), cornmeal upside down plum cake (oh, plum cake...), and a couple other things. but shaunna and i eyed the butterscotch pudding and went with it. jessica got the panna cotta despite the gelatin. let me just say that that pudding is the best pudding i have ever had in my life. or, at least, the best butterscotch pudding i have ever had in my life. my other pudding high points: the best recipe's double chocolate pudding recipe is the best pudding recipe in the world; and the joy of cooking milk-and-cornstarch vanilla pudding is just fantastic. but this butterscotch pudding was pretty out-of-this-world - silky, creamy, dense but not too desne...oh, i want more just thinking about it. i think the one thing it may have been lacking (and this is a very contentious "may") was some salty counterpoint - in the same way that caramel is a thousand times better if it's slightly salty, a burst of salty something in the pudding would have been fabulous.
all in all, though, upstairs on the square is a fabulous place, and definitely belongs on your to-do-list. i would like to go there for dinner sometime, to see if there's a big difference in the experience. don't forget the dessert!
04 mai 2005
review: please turn off the bad french pop! (petit robert bistro)
restaurant review : petit robert bistro, 468 comm ave
visited : 30 april (6pm), 1 may (6:30pm)
saturday.
the buzz on the restaurant was good. i had really just sent the review from the globe to french house because the restaurant's manager is loic le garrec - the name of the doctor in "a la folie...pas du tout" (he loves me, he loves me not) if you remember it. if you don't, or if you have no idea what i'm talking about, you should go rent this movie from the video store.
walking into the restaurant requires you to walk down a narrow set of concrete steps, which lead into a charming little restaurant that really seems to take you into a different world (in contrast to the collegiate/brownstone atmosphere of kenmore square). wait at the threshold, where oddly enough, the main coatrack is in the anteroom, offering free access to anyone, and you will theoretically be greeted by the hostess. we were greeted by the hostess, but apparently our coats were not deemed to be special enough to be hung on the coatrack indoors. oh well.
we were seated on the lower level, near the pastry bar. the restaurant was barely half full, but we settled into our table quite nicely. first things first : to the manager of the restaurant, please do not cycle the same short playlist of bad french pop four times in three hours. the first song sounded like elevator music, and i'm sorry, but i am not a fan of hearing zazie's "j'envoie valser" four times in one evening.
the next thing i noticed : our water glasses were refilled constantly. and by constantly, i mean every two or three minutes. i am all for full water glasses, but they were a little bit overattentive in this respect. on the other hand, when bread arrived, it was wonderful and so hot as to be steaming when we cracked it open. luckily, the bread was replenished as nicely as the water, so we were never in want of it. this is one of the few restaurants that actually serves bread correctly, and in fact, it might take first place honors in this respect. i can't remember the last time i've had such good bread at a restaurant, come to think of it. its rival is, of course, sel de la terre, but the warmth of the bread, and the way that the butter (which is very, very yellow, almost disconcertingly so) melts on it is quite winning.
our waiter was french, and we (by which i mean keith) asked if he was willing to speak to us in french, which he was. i can only hope that one day i will have a real french accent when i speak french. anyway, we ordered our appetizers, which included the soup of the day (vichysoisse), a vegan pate, the housemade pate "with condiments," the lobster bisque, escargots, the "pasta ribbon with goat cheese crumbs and walnuts," and a salad. kudos to the restaurant for excellent and unpretentious salad greens - i have really come to hate weird salad mixes, especially "field greens." "field greens" is really a euphemism for "weird and incongruous mix of tough, bitter salad greens that are shaped like coral." i also hate it when restaurants are too trendy.
the menu at petit robert bistro is pretty good - it has the standard, plus some more interesting and adventurous things - for example, the tripe as a plat principal. serious points off, though, for the menu in franglais - choose one or the other, or at least have the french and english translations side by side. "spinach au beurre" and "soupe a l'onion ..." ok, i forget the last word. but it was in french, and only the word "onion" was in english. the word in french for onion, by the way, is "oignon." also, hors d'oeuvres are ok, but seriously, this restaurant is owned by french people. they KNOW that "entree" means first course, not main course (which would be plat principal). one cannot claim to be a real french restaurant and then ignore the way the french eat, even if it is just a bistro.
back to the food, which, after all, is the important part. the appetizers, i hear, were all great. i unfortunately couldn't do much tasting, as i was/am sick. i had the housemade pate, which was really three different pates, plus a tiny salad and a smattering of cornichons. the pates were pretty good, especially the one that i'm pretty sure was really just livers of some kind and butter, but overall, this pate had nothing on the pork rillettes that i had at craigie street bistrot. on the other hand, considering that this pate was half the price, it was pretty darn good. i'm afraid i've been spoiled by good food. and the cornichons! i love cornichons. there is no better way to eat pickle-like substances. unless it's on a hot sub or a fast food, that is.
onto the main course. i had the rabbit - roasted, with mustard, plus julienned leeks. i'm not sure if there were actually any leeks on my plate, but the baby green beans and julienned carrots were nice, anyway. i thought the mustard was fabulous, but the rabbit was a little salty - it was one of those things where you really had to eat a bit of everything in each bite to balance the flavors. i don't know if it was supposed to be like that; something tells me no. it was, however, huge, or at least seemed so after the appetizer. in fact, there was so much leftover that i asked the waitress to pack it up for me; i usually wouldn't, but it seemed like it would be a real waste of food. as a testament to how busy the restaurant was, and thus how stretched the service was, she totally forgot about it. i decided not to say anything, though.
dessert was a fun affair - we all got different ones. i had the gateau petit robert, which was essentially a chocolate cake with a little chocolate tour eiffel as a decoration. it wasn't bad, but it wasn't that good, either - the marjolaine that jessica made me for my birthday far surpassed it. on the other hand, nina's tarte tatin was absolutely the best tarte tatin i've ever had in my life - it could have been a perfect 10. jessica's boston cream pie was a bit of a letdown - just not as soft as it was supposed to be, and not as cold, either. the vanilla cream part seemed to be a bit off - the flavor wasn't as clean and vanilla-y as it should have been.
despite the flaws in the food, it was still pretty darn good, and we had a really good time, spending 3 hours there from start to finish. the atmosphere of the restaurant is great, with a funny mix of people, from french people, to old couples, to the young hip. if you want to go out somewhere, go here. but i would rather cook, because it would be just as good, and cheaper.
sunday.
we arrived to an empty foyer. we didn't have to wait long for the host to appear, but we did have to wait. odd, since it was sunday and the restaurant wasn't very full at all. the music was better, but i have to say that the service really suffered. when the waitress came back to take our orders, she paused while heading around our table to ask another table how they were doing. ask, yes. but after tending to the party you just flagged down... one of the waiters was looking for something in the silverware bureau, couldn't find it, slammed the drawer shut and stomped into the kitchen. on the bright side, tonight i had the duck confit with some sort of sausage and the same green beans and carrots, plus braised savoy cabbage. i'm a big fan of braised or sauteed cabbage, which my mother likes to cook at home. the duck was also fantastic, if a bit salty, but the saltiness didn't seem out of place here. it was also fantastically better with a glass of red wine. nora had the beef bourguignon, which was pretty good. mom had the bouillabaisse and dad had the steak. i'm always surprised by the speed with which mom and dad eat, since my friends and i will spend three hours sitting around the dinner table.
the verdict : so really i'm tired of doing work, and tired of writing, which made this review a bit problematic. it was a good restaurant and it's a fun place to eat at, but it's just not really worth the money. you can do better on your own time, in your own kitchen. or rather, come over to my house and i'll cook for you.
visited : 30 april (6pm), 1 may (6:30pm)
saturday.
the buzz on the restaurant was good. i had really just sent the review from the globe to french house because the restaurant's manager is loic le garrec - the name of the doctor in "a la folie...pas du tout" (he loves me, he loves me not) if you remember it. if you don't, or if you have no idea what i'm talking about, you should go rent this movie from the video store.
walking into the restaurant requires you to walk down a narrow set of concrete steps, which lead into a charming little restaurant that really seems to take you into a different world (in contrast to the collegiate/brownstone atmosphere of kenmore square). wait at the threshold, where oddly enough, the main coatrack is in the anteroom, offering free access to anyone, and you will theoretically be greeted by the hostess. we were greeted by the hostess, but apparently our coats were not deemed to be special enough to be hung on the coatrack indoors. oh well.
we were seated on the lower level, near the pastry bar. the restaurant was barely half full, but we settled into our table quite nicely. first things first : to the manager of the restaurant, please do not cycle the same short playlist of bad french pop four times in three hours. the first song sounded like elevator music, and i'm sorry, but i am not a fan of hearing zazie's "j'envoie valser" four times in one evening.
the next thing i noticed : our water glasses were refilled constantly. and by constantly, i mean every two or three minutes. i am all for full water glasses, but they were a little bit overattentive in this respect. on the other hand, when bread arrived, it was wonderful and so hot as to be steaming when we cracked it open. luckily, the bread was replenished as nicely as the water, so we were never in want of it. this is one of the few restaurants that actually serves bread correctly, and in fact, it might take first place honors in this respect. i can't remember the last time i've had such good bread at a restaurant, come to think of it. its rival is, of course, sel de la terre, but the warmth of the bread, and the way that the butter (which is very, very yellow, almost disconcertingly so) melts on it is quite winning.
our waiter was french, and we (by which i mean keith) asked if he was willing to speak to us in french, which he was. i can only hope that one day i will have a real french accent when i speak french. anyway, we ordered our appetizers, which included the soup of the day (vichysoisse), a vegan pate, the housemade pate "with condiments," the lobster bisque, escargots, the "pasta ribbon with goat cheese crumbs and walnuts," and a salad. kudos to the restaurant for excellent and unpretentious salad greens - i have really come to hate weird salad mixes, especially "field greens." "field greens" is really a euphemism for "weird and incongruous mix of tough, bitter salad greens that are shaped like coral." i also hate it when restaurants are too trendy.
the menu at petit robert bistro is pretty good - it has the standard, plus some more interesting and adventurous things - for example, the tripe as a plat principal. serious points off, though, for the menu in franglais - choose one or the other, or at least have the french and english translations side by side. "spinach au beurre" and "soupe a l'onion ..." ok, i forget the last word. but it was in french, and only the word "onion" was in english. the word in french for onion, by the way, is "oignon." also, hors d'oeuvres are ok, but seriously, this restaurant is owned by french people. they KNOW that "entree" means first course, not main course (which would be plat principal). one cannot claim to be a real french restaurant and then ignore the way the french eat, even if it is just a bistro.
back to the food, which, after all, is the important part. the appetizers, i hear, were all great. i unfortunately couldn't do much tasting, as i was/am sick. i had the housemade pate, which was really three different pates, plus a tiny salad and a smattering of cornichons. the pates were pretty good, especially the one that i'm pretty sure was really just livers of some kind and butter, but overall, this pate had nothing on the pork rillettes that i had at craigie street bistrot. on the other hand, considering that this pate was half the price, it was pretty darn good. i'm afraid i've been spoiled by good food. and the cornichons! i love cornichons. there is no better way to eat pickle-like substances. unless it's on a hot sub or a fast food, that is.
onto the main course. i had the rabbit - roasted, with mustard, plus julienned leeks. i'm not sure if there were actually any leeks on my plate, but the baby green beans and julienned carrots were nice, anyway. i thought the mustard was fabulous, but the rabbit was a little salty - it was one of those things where you really had to eat a bit of everything in each bite to balance the flavors. i don't know if it was supposed to be like that; something tells me no. it was, however, huge, or at least seemed so after the appetizer. in fact, there was so much leftover that i asked the waitress to pack it up for me; i usually wouldn't, but it seemed like it would be a real waste of food. as a testament to how busy the restaurant was, and thus how stretched the service was, she totally forgot about it. i decided not to say anything, though.
dessert was a fun affair - we all got different ones. i had the gateau petit robert, which was essentially a chocolate cake with a little chocolate tour eiffel as a decoration. it wasn't bad, but it wasn't that good, either - the marjolaine that jessica made me for my birthday far surpassed it. on the other hand, nina's tarte tatin was absolutely the best tarte tatin i've ever had in my life - it could have been a perfect 10. jessica's boston cream pie was a bit of a letdown - just not as soft as it was supposed to be, and not as cold, either. the vanilla cream part seemed to be a bit off - the flavor wasn't as clean and vanilla-y as it should have been.
despite the flaws in the food, it was still pretty darn good, and we had a really good time, spending 3 hours there from start to finish. the atmosphere of the restaurant is great, with a funny mix of people, from french people, to old couples, to the young hip. if you want to go out somewhere, go here. but i would rather cook, because it would be just as good, and cheaper.
sunday.
we arrived to an empty foyer. we didn't have to wait long for the host to appear, but we did have to wait. odd, since it was sunday and the restaurant wasn't very full at all. the music was better, but i have to say that the service really suffered. when the waitress came back to take our orders, she paused while heading around our table to ask another table how they were doing. ask, yes. but after tending to the party you just flagged down... one of the waiters was looking for something in the silverware bureau, couldn't find it, slammed the drawer shut and stomped into the kitchen. on the bright side, tonight i had the duck confit with some sort of sausage and the same green beans and carrots, plus braised savoy cabbage. i'm a big fan of braised or sauteed cabbage, which my mother likes to cook at home. the duck was also fantastic, if a bit salty, but the saltiness didn't seem out of place here. it was also fantastically better with a glass of red wine. nora had the beef bourguignon, which was pretty good. mom had the bouillabaisse and dad had the steak. i'm always surprised by the speed with which mom and dad eat, since my friends and i will spend three hours sitting around the dinner table.
the verdict : so really i'm tired of doing work, and tired of writing, which made this review a bit problematic. it was a good restaurant and it's a fun place to eat at, but it's just not really worth the money. you can do better on your own time, in your own kitchen. or rather, come over to my house and i'll cook for you.
29 avril 2005
french house cooking philosophy and such
ah, studio or cooking: which one is more important? well, seeing as a review is not a negotiable thing, but cooking is, i went with studio. for the past three or four weeks. in return, my body feels like it's on its last legs, coughing out all the brain cells and vital organs. i'm not kidding about coughing stuff up, either. it's gross. it makes it really hard to get up in the morning. i suppose that's all i should expect, though, after subjecting my body to all that sleep deprivation, horrible eating habits, and all that other good stuff that comes with studio.
all the same, i wanted to go out with a bang for my final menu at lmf. i suppose i might guest chef a couple times in the future, but this is my last menu as a senior. it's the same feeling that i have graduating this year as an undergrad - next year's graduation with my MCP means more in terms of getting a job, but these are the four years that have mattered, and the ones that have made me what i am now. - end overly gushy sentimentality -
back to what matters - the food! i wanted to do something elaborate without overtaxing my already overtaxed body. i've come to realize the beauty of simple food that requires no preparation. to get to the point, here is the menu:
la nourriture francaise a la maison francaise: un repas en cinq parties
1e : potage puree de crecy
2e : petite salade verte
3e : poulet roti a l'estragon
veg - quiche aux epinards
gratin de pommes de terre
carottes a la creme
4e : pause de fromage
5e : napoleons aux fraises
so, in english, a five-course traditional french meal. while i have no control over how people actually eat their food, i made the following suggestion: a carrot soup, followed by a small, simple (lettuce, oil and vinegar) salad to cleanse the palate and act as a break before the main course, then protein (because it's so difficult to be a vegetarian in France) with a starch and a vegetable, and another pause (filled by cheese in this case, with cornichons), then dessert. dessert in this case was "napoleons," but were really oatmeal tuiles/florentines filled with whipped cream and strawberries.
this was a particularly fun menu because it was very simple, and i made up the dessert (while not all that original, it was at least a very nice combination of sweet, tart, and buttery). the idea of being elaborate with very simple things is an interesting one. it was also not as taxing on my cooking team as my menus are wont to be. it's also very satisfying to create a menu in courses, for some reason, though people often don't understand that they are correspondingly smaller amounts of food. sigh. the american way of eating can be very frustrating sometimes.
and, the decision for french food. when i tell people that i live in french house, and that we cook dinner, they invariably ask "so do you eat a lot of french food?" the answer, should you happen to meet me, is, resoundingly no. occasionally, yes, but if you were new somewhere and needed to devise a menu, wouldn't you choose food that you grew up with? and, seeing as none of us are native french, but rather american, it follows that the majority of the food we eat is either american, italian, or lebanese. (we have three lebanese students.) anyway, the french food. since we have it so infrequently, i thought people should be educated on what it is. not that i am any kind of expert in french food, in regards to both the process of cooking it or the repertoire of dishes, but i thought i'd give it a go all the same. what i came up with was a group of things that are very simple, but make up something that's really quite nice. i was more successful combining flavors/textures with the dessert more than anything else; the main course was a result of wanting to roast chickens, trying to find a suitable vegetarian option, and wanting to cook carrots (this is a common way to make up a menu in french house - menus are often lists of food that we haven't had in a long time but have a sudden yen for). i hate raw carrots, but i do love cooked carrots quite a lot.
every time i make up a menu, i try to make it as painless as possible for my cooking team. if i want to do something elaborate, then i shouldn't foist my lofty goals upon the rest of my cooking team - we're here to have fun and take a break from MIT, not reinvent the wheel. i was more successful with this last year, when i had more time (i realize now that when i thought i was busy last year, i really didn't know the meaning of the word) and could do more prep work ahead of time. as it is, i always end up prepping something ahead of time, because it needs more time than 4-6:15pm will afford, or because i couldn't possibly put my cooking team through that much work. an example of this: for a menu last fall i made all of the pies ahead of time because the rest of the menu would have just been too complicated. also, the pies needed to set to be truly good - i like my pumpkin pie cold and pecan pie needs time to set. for this menu the only prep work i did was the tuiles, the night before.
somewhat surprisingly, i was fairly successful with suppressing the chicken-with-its-head-cut-off type of hysteria that generally characterizes cooking during my menus. two of the courses required virtually no work (the salad and the cheese), so i had one person working on each other recipe, pretty much. let's not talk about the quiche crust, but the quiche filling was pretty good (thank you, julia child). it if isn't going to be good, it might as well look good, hence the traditional fluted tart pan-shaped quiche (and after all, it was a traditional french meal).
dinner was late, because as usual the chickens took a while to bake. i believe it was because they were stuffed full with a bunch of tarragon and lemon wedges - effectively acting as a stuffing. but they were pretty good, anyway; i think they needed a bit more tarragon, and less lemon, but the skin was crackling and golden, and the meat was actually perfectly done on all of the chickens. you would think that it only takes an hour to roast a chicken, but that's just not true when you have two chickens on the middle rack and an enormous pan of potatoes on the bottom rack - everything just cooks more slowly because there's more in the oven and the heat doesn't circulate as evenly. these four chickens (in two ovens) took fully two hours to get to the right temperature. in bastings of butter, that's a lot of butter.
on the bright side, dinner was good and well-attended - no empty chairs! i am always happy when my menus are well-attended, though i understand all the same if someone doesn't like what i'm making. this is probably pretentious, or vainglorious, or whatever you might want to say, but i have always wanted to be somewhat of a legend at french house - almost famous, you might say. i've put away the late-night cookie-baking for late-night model-making, but i still do put heart and soul into my menus, which are pretty much (sappy as this may sound) an open declaration of love both to french house and food in general. anyway, the 300-in-a-night cooking record past, food stewarding glory/grueling/anal days over (and i'm happy to see that some of the changes i made in the system will continue), i am left with this last menu. you don't often get the chance to cook for thirty people, unless of course you live at french house, in which case you get that chance once a week. if i can't change the world, i would have liked to at least changed french house.
oh, and the wine - i didn't have any white wine lying around (or at least, good white wine), so i put a bottle of rose in the fridge before i left for class this morning. i can hear your sigh, reader, at the thought of a rose wine. well, i'm as much of a wine snob as you, dear reader, and i hate those sickly sweet rose wines. the rose wine we had tonight was just something i got at a local wine shop, but most importantly, it was from france, so it was dry. if you want to get into specifics, it was an e. guigal, 2002 cotes du rhone rose. it was pretty good for a rose, though of course they're not really anything special - pretty acidic, well balanced, not overly anything. it was quite good with the food.
i keep waiting for a menu to be red-wine-appropriate, which is somewhat frustrating because people often make either vegetarian food or things with chicken, neither of which take all that well to red wine. and i'm not sure what the custom is with just drinking red wine with everything, table-wine-in-france style. ah, well. that south african red wine is just going to have to sit around a while longer. and charles needs to have his birthday already, or that tokaji is going to burn a proverbial hole in my pocket. or, maybe i'll keep it and we can drink it when we graduate, since i know jessica will drink it with me (it's a 5 puttonyos 1996 tokaji from hungary, one that we tasted in the wine class we took over iap).
if you are still reading - i happen to be going out to dinner not once, but twice this weekend, and oddly enough, to the same place (petit robert bistro). you get the benefit of a real restaurant review then, eh?
and, the list of restaurants i still need to go to with jessica : central kitchen, veggie planet, no 9 park, craigie street bistrot, chez henri, helmand, coriander bistro, upstairs on the square, oishii, blue ginger, and salts. oh! and if you have the new zagat guide for boston, they totally quoted me in their bit on pigalle ("perfect pacing" - yes! almost famous!).
i realize that i have forgotten to give a formal edict on the result of my menu! by attendance, a resounding success - that whole "last menu ever" bit really pulled people in. by virtue of the food, doing pretty well. not a flawless choice of dishes, but each one was done well (thank you cooking team) and the whole five-course thing seemed to keep people around for a while - which was the point, anyway. i think probably the best part was the dessert, as is generally the case with my menus. this one is probably the simplest one i've ever done, though, partly to convince myself that i can do very simple things. sometimes the knee-jerk reaction is to go for the baroque/rococo/era-of-gold-encrusted-things type of dessert, elaborate and all-out, whereas a very beautiful, simple japanese type of thing goes much better. all in all, though, a lot of fun and a fitting goodbye to cheffing at french house.
and a bit of a footnote:
does anyone else hate saying "potatoes au gratin"? i hate saying it with the american accent because it's french and, well, i know french so i should use the french. but people don't understand you unless you say it with the american accent. so frustrating.
all the same, i wanted to go out with a bang for my final menu at lmf. i suppose i might guest chef a couple times in the future, but this is my last menu as a senior. it's the same feeling that i have graduating this year as an undergrad - next year's graduation with my MCP means more in terms of getting a job, but these are the four years that have mattered, and the ones that have made me what i am now. - end overly gushy sentimentality -
back to what matters - the food! i wanted to do something elaborate without overtaxing my already overtaxed body. i've come to realize the beauty of simple food that requires no preparation. to get to the point, here is the menu:
la nourriture francaise a la maison francaise: un repas en cinq parties
1e : potage puree de crecy
2e : petite salade verte
3e : poulet roti a l'estragon
veg - quiche aux epinards
gratin de pommes de terre
carottes a la creme
4e : pause de fromage
5e : napoleons aux fraises
so, in english, a five-course traditional french meal. while i have no control over how people actually eat their food, i made the following suggestion: a carrot soup, followed by a small, simple (lettuce, oil and vinegar) salad to cleanse the palate and act as a break before the main course, then protein (because it's so difficult to be a vegetarian in France) with a starch and a vegetable, and another pause (filled by cheese in this case, with cornichons), then dessert. dessert in this case was "napoleons," but were really oatmeal tuiles/florentines filled with whipped cream and strawberries.
this was a particularly fun menu because it was very simple, and i made up the dessert (while not all that original, it was at least a very nice combination of sweet, tart, and buttery). the idea of being elaborate with very simple things is an interesting one. it was also not as taxing on my cooking team as my menus are wont to be. it's also very satisfying to create a menu in courses, for some reason, though people often don't understand that they are correspondingly smaller amounts of food. sigh. the american way of eating can be very frustrating sometimes.
and, the decision for french food. when i tell people that i live in french house, and that we cook dinner, they invariably ask "so do you eat a lot of french food?" the answer, should you happen to meet me, is, resoundingly no. occasionally, yes, but if you were new somewhere and needed to devise a menu, wouldn't you choose food that you grew up with? and, seeing as none of us are native french, but rather american, it follows that the majority of the food we eat is either american, italian, or lebanese. (we have three lebanese students.) anyway, the french food. since we have it so infrequently, i thought people should be educated on what it is. not that i am any kind of expert in french food, in regards to both the process of cooking it or the repertoire of dishes, but i thought i'd give it a go all the same. what i came up with was a group of things that are very simple, but make up something that's really quite nice. i was more successful combining flavors/textures with the dessert more than anything else; the main course was a result of wanting to roast chickens, trying to find a suitable vegetarian option, and wanting to cook carrots (this is a common way to make up a menu in french house - menus are often lists of food that we haven't had in a long time but have a sudden yen for). i hate raw carrots, but i do love cooked carrots quite a lot.
every time i make up a menu, i try to make it as painless as possible for my cooking team. if i want to do something elaborate, then i shouldn't foist my lofty goals upon the rest of my cooking team - we're here to have fun and take a break from MIT, not reinvent the wheel. i was more successful with this last year, when i had more time (i realize now that when i thought i was busy last year, i really didn't know the meaning of the word) and could do more prep work ahead of time. as it is, i always end up prepping something ahead of time, because it needs more time than 4-6:15pm will afford, or because i couldn't possibly put my cooking team through that much work. an example of this: for a menu last fall i made all of the pies ahead of time because the rest of the menu would have just been too complicated. also, the pies needed to set to be truly good - i like my pumpkin pie cold and pecan pie needs time to set. for this menu the only prep work i did was the tuiles, the night before.
somewhat surprisingly, i was fairly successful with suppressing the chicken-with-its-head-cut-off type of hysteria that generally characterizes cooking during my menus. two of the courses required virtually no work (the salad and the cheese), so i had one person working on each other recipe, pretty much. let's not talk about the quiche crust, but the quiche filling was pretty good (thank you, julia child). it if isn't going to be good, it might as well look good, hence the traditional fluted tart pan-shaped quiche (and after all, it was a traditional french meal).
dinner was late, because as usual the chickens took a while to bake. i believe it was because they were stuffed full with a bunch of tarragon and lemon wedges - effectively acting as a stuffing. but they were pretty good, anyway; i think they needed a bit more tarragon, and less lemon, but the skin was crackling and golden, and the meat was actually perfectly done on all of the chickens. you would think that it only takes an hour to roast a chicken, but that's just not true when you have two chickens on the middle rack and an enormous pan of potatoes on the bottom rack - everything just cooks more slowly because there's more in the oven and the heat doesn't circulate as evenly. these four chickens (in two ovens) took fully two hours to get to the right temperature. in bastings of butter, that's a lot of butter.
on the bright side, dinner was good and well-attended - no empty chairs! i am always happy when my menus are well-attended, though i understand all the same if someone doesn't like what i'm making. this is probably pretentious, or vainglorious, or whatever you might want to say, but i have always wanted to be somewhat of a legend at french house - almost famous, you might say. i've put away the late-night cookie-baking for late-night model-making, but i still do put heart and soul into my menus, which are pretty much (sappy as this may sound) an open declaration of love both to french house and food in general. anyway, the 300-in-a-night cooking record past, food stewarding glory/grueling/anal days over (and i'm happy to see that some of the changes i made in the system will continue), i am left with this last menu. you don't often get the chance to cook for thirty people, unless of course you live at french house, in which case you get that chance once a week. if i can't change the world, i would have liked to at least changed french house.
oh, and the wine - i didn't have any white wine lying around (or at least, good white wine), so i put a bottle of rose in the fridge before i left for class this morning. i can hear your sigh, reader, at the thought of a rose wine. well, i'm as much of a wine snob as you, dear reader, and i hate those sickly sweet rose wines. the rose wine we had tonight was just something i got at a local wine shop, but most importantly, it was from france, so it was dry. if you want to get into specifics, it was an e. guigal, 2002 cotes du rhone rose. it was pretty good for a rose, though of course they're not really anything special - pretty acidic, well balanced, not overly anything. it was quite good with the food.
i keep waiting for a menu to be red-wine-appropriate, which is somewhat frustrating because people often make either vegetarian food or things with chicken, neither of which take all that well to red wine. and i'm not sure what the custom is with just drinking red wine with everything, table-wine-in-france style. ah, well. that south african red wine is just going to have to sit around a while longer. and charles needs to have his birthday already, or that tokaji is going to burn a proverbial hole in my pocket. or, maybe i'll keep it and we can drink it when we graduate, since i know jessica will drink it with me (it's a 5 puttonyos 1996 tokaji from hungary, one that we tasted in the wine class we took over iap).
if you are still reading - i happen to be going out to dinner not once, but twice this weekend, and oddly enough, to the same place (petit robert bistro). you get the benefit of a real restaurant review then, eh?
and, the list of restaurants i still need to go to with jessica : central kitchen, veggie planet, no 9 park, craigie street bistrot, chez henri, helmand, coriander bistro, upstairs on the square, oishii, blue ginger, and salts. oh! and if you have the new zagat guide for boston, they totally quoted me in their bit on pigalle ("perfect pacing" - yes! almost famous!).
i realize that i have forgotten to give a formal edict on the result of my menu! by attendance, a resounding success - that whole "last menu ever" bit really pulled people in. by virtue of the food, doing pretty well. not a flawless choice of dishes, but each one was done well (thank you cooking team) and the whole five-course thing seemed to keep people around for a while - which was the point, anyway. i think probably the best part was the dessert, as is generally the case with my menus. this one is probably the simplest one i've ever done, though, partly to convince myself that i can do very simple things. sometimes the knee-jerk reaction is to go for the baroque/rococo/era-of-gold-encrusted-things type of dessert, elaborate and all-out, whereas a very beautiful, simple japanese type of thing goes much better. all in all, though, a lot of fun and a fitting goodbye to cheffing at french house.
and a bit of a footnote:
does anyone else hate saying "potatoes au gratin"? i hate saying it with the american accent because it's french and, well, i know french so i should use the french. but people don't understand you unless you say it with the american accent. so frustrating.
29 mars 2005
easter : an excuse for mimosas
forgive me if you are reading this and you actually celebrate easter (as opposed to consuming large amounts of chocolate). neither jessica nor i are religious, but the allure of the mimosa resulted in an easter celebration.
i'd never had a mimosa before, but it's apparently jessica's favorite champagne drink. lo and behold, easter loomed before us, and gave us the perfect excuse to have mimosas. we thus structured an easter brunch around mimosas. theme : elegant. we invited eva and oded, and vicky and peter.
on the menu:
citrus fruit salad
asparagus with hollandaise sauce
herbed crepes with "spring tomato sauce" (epicurious' name, not mine)
curried egg salad sandwiches
easter eggs!
hamantaschen
apricot souffles with creme anglaise
as usual, we made far too much food. on the bright side, that meant leftover egg salad sandwiches. we had our brunch in the maisonnette with eva, oded, vicky, and betsy (peter was in san diego), who regaled us with stories about her spring break, spent in new mexico teaching little kids.
that's enough details. on to the food... i believe all of our recipes came from epicurious (except for the hollandaise, which was from julia - masterting the art of french cooking). jessica blanched the asparagus and made the hollandaise sauce (so i still have never made hollandaise, only enjoyed eating it. i promise to stop using so many parenthetical phrases soon), while i made the egg salad and the crepes.
crepes! i had never actually made crepes, only watched other people doing it. i can now confidently say that i can make crepes. it took a couple tries at the beginning, but somehow the heat finally got to the right temperature and my crepes were coming off slightly golden and slightly crispy. basically, the recipe was an "herbed" crepe (i bet you thought this would be more exotic, but it just means crepe batter with chopped herbs in it - i used chives, parsley, and tarragon, all fresh, of course) filled with a mixture of ricotta, sauteed, diced bell peppers, and parmesan. changes i made in the recipe included using red, orange, and yellow bell peppers instead of the recipe's green - which also makes them slightly sweeter, and i think better. i also used pecorino romano instead of parmesan, both because it was cheaper and, as i found out later, i like pecorino romano better. anyway, you fill the crepes, lay them in a baking dish, sprinkle them with cheese, and stick them in the oven for a bit - 20 minutes in the recipe, but 10 minutes in reality. i'm not too sure what this does, but ok. maybe the flavors meld? the cheese in the filling has already melted from the heat of the bell peppers... anyway, then there's this "spring tomato sauce" that goes with the crepes - and i recommend definitely serving at least a tomato sauce with the crepes, because it's a surprisingly fantastic combination. the recipe uses some dried herbs, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, and then some fresh tomatoes. it tasted only slightly canned to me, but i think i would make the sauce entirely from fresh everything next time - that teaches me to use canned tomatoes.
the curried egg salad sandwiches were also a hit. the mixture is basically eggs, chopped parsley and chives, currants, mayo, and curry powder. it's a great combination - and the currants, provided that they're soft and not hard, are a fabulous addition, and better than craisins, which are too big and a bit too tart. the recipe uses "country bread" but i used my favorite tea-sandwich bread - that arnold's brick oven white bread, which i'm sure has no nutritional value, but is just the right thickness and has square slices.
i love hollandaise. there's just nothing else to say about it. while you lot are thinking, "but what about the calories!" i'm thinking "lemony, buttery goodness..."
i also love hamantaschen - thank you, eva! there are three good triangular foods i know of: hamantaschen, boreg, and tea sandwiches that do not involve copious amounts of cream cheese. (sorry, i don't like baklava.) by the way, if you were wondering, the word "easter" deviates from the latin, hebrew and french (the french is "paques" - and this is the word for both easter and passover) because easter comes from "austron," the northumbrian name for the goddess of fertility and sunrise. yay pagan roots. if austron is the goddess of sunrise, will she bless my architecture project with more light?
and the souffles. they were tart and sweet all at the same time, an exclamation point of a souffle if there ever was one. the combination of the souffle and the creme anglaise was absolutely perfect, with the tartness cut by the cool creamy vanilla. at that point, sadly, i couldn't finish my souffle because i had had one hamantaschen and one egg salad triangle too many.
finally: the mimosas were fabulous. i hope the rest of you ate some chocolate bunnies.
i'd never had a mimosa before, but it's apparently jessica's favorite champagne drink. lo and behold, easter loomed before us, and gave us the perfect excuse to have mimosas. we thus structured an easter brunch around mimosas. theme : elegant. we invited eva and oded, and vicky and peter.
on the menu:
citrus fruit salad
asparagus with hollandaise sauce
herbed crepes with "spring tomato sauce" (epicurious' name, not mine)
curried egg salad sandwiches
easter eggs!
hamantaschen
apricot souffles with creme anglaise
as usual, we made far too much food. on the bright side, that meant leftover egg salad sandwiches. we had our brunch in the maisonnette with eva, oded, vicky, and betsy (peter was in san diego), who regaled us with stories about her spring break, spent in new mexico teaching little kids.
that's enough details. on to the food... i believe all of our recipes came from epicurious (except for the hollandaise, which was from julia - masterting the art of french cooking). jessica blanched the asparagus and made the hollandaise sauce (so i still have never made hollandaise, only enjoyed eating it. i promise to stop using so many parenthetical phrases soon), while i made the egg salad and the crepes.
crepes! i had never actually made crepes, only watched other people doing it. i can now confidently say that i can make crepes. it took a couple tries at the beginning, but somehow the heat finally got to the right temperature and my crepes were coming off slightly golden and slightly crispy. basically, the recipe was an "herbed" crepe (i bet you thought this would be more exotic, but it just means crepe batter with chopped herbs in it - i used chives, parsley, and tarragon, all fresh, of course) filled with a mixture of ricotta, sauteed, diced bell peppers, and parmesan. changes i made in the recipe included using red, orange, and yellow bell peppers instead of the recipe's green - which also makes them slightly sweeter, and i think better. i also used pecorino romano instead of parmesan, both because it was cheaper and, as i found out later, i like pecorino romano better. anyway, you fill the crepes, lay them in a baking dish, sprinkle them with cheese, and stick them in the oven for a bit - 20 minutes in the recipe, but 10 minutes in reality. i'm not too sure what this does, but ok. maybe the flavors meld? the cheese in the filling has already melted from the heat of the bell peppers... anyway, then there's this "spring tomato sauce" that goes with the crepes - and i recommend definitely serving at least a tomato sauce with the crepes, because it's a surprisingly fantastic combination. the recipe uses some dried herbs, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, and then some fresh tomatoes. it tasted only slightly canned to me, but i think i would make the sauce entirely from fresh everything next time - that teaches me to use canned tomatoes.
the curried egg salad sandwiches were also a hit. the mixture is basically eggs, chopped parsley and chives, currants, mayo, and curry powder. it's a great combination - and the currants, provided that they're soft and not hard, are a fabulous addition, and better than craisins, which are too big and a bit too tart. the recipe uses "country bread" but i used my favorite tea-sandwich bread - that arnold's brick oven white bread, which i'm sure has no nutritional value, but is just the right thickness and has square slices.
i love hollandaise. there's just nothing else to say about it. while you lot are thinking, "but what about the calories!" i'm thinking "lemony, buttery goodness..."
i also love hamantaschen - thank you, eva! there are three good triangular foods i know of: hamantaschen, boreg, and tea sandwiches that do not involve copious amounts of cream cheese. (sorry, i don't like baklava.) by the way, if you were wondering, the word "easter" deviates from the latin, hebrew and french (the french is "paques" - and this is the word for both easter and passover) because easter comes from "austron," the northumbrian name for the goddess of fertility and sunrise. yay pagan roots. if austron is the goddess of sunrise, will she bless my architecture project with more light?
and the souffles. they were tart and sweet all at the same time, an exclamation point of a souffle if there ever was one. the combination of the souffle and the creme anglaise was absolutely perfect, with the tartness cut by the cool creamy vanilla. at that point, sadly, i couldn't finish my souffle because i had had one hamantaschen and one egg salad triangle too many.
finally: the mimosas were fabulous. i hope the rest of you ate some chocolate bunnies.
26 mars 2005
good eatin' in the neighborhood
you should see our rush video! it has me in it! ok, actually you shouldn't see it just because it has me in it. i can't act and i'm not photogenic. but i made the cake in it, and the video itself very funny. you can see it if you go to the "etc" page of our website: http://web.mit.edu/lmf/www/.
our menus for the week before and after spring break:
11 mars / lisa : legumes en cocotte, mostaccioli alfredo, brown sugar pound cake
13 mars / michelle : salade nicoise, pates au pistou, ratatouille, gratin d'abricots aux amandes
14 mars / jessica lee : rainbow congee, hot + sour cabbage, minced "squab" in lettuce leaves, minced tofu in lettuce leaves, caramelized banana purses
15 mars / manal : fattoush, hummus, mankeesh, rice pudding
16 mars / diana : salad, meat + potato lasagna, vegetable lasagna, apple bundles
17 mars / jessica huot : salad, texas toast, penne rosa, pecan pie
28 mars / george : hommos bi tehini, tabbouleh, fassoliah wa riz, vegetable fassoliah wa riz, ben and jerry's
29 mars / holly : potato gnocchi, stuffed mushrooms, orange sponge cake with meringue and dark chocolate sauce
30 mars / waseem : chickpea salad, boreg, orange juice chicken, chocolate chip cookies
31 mars / marissa : italian menu no. 6 : foccacia with ricotta and olive oil, spaghetti + meatballs, fettuccine with sundried tomato-olive-red pepper cream sauce, creamed spinach, pick-me-ups (aka chocolate chip cookie/chocolate chocolate chip cookie/oatmeal raisin/spice cookie ice cream sandwiches)
1 avril / v : empanadas, tinadtad + rice, pineapple surprise (one should never call anything "[insert random word] surprise." i am sure it will be good, but still...however, v, i forgive you because i love tinadtad.)
our menus for the week before and after spring break:
11 mars / lisa : legumes en cocotte, mostaccioli alfredo, brown sugar pound cake
13 mars / michelle : salade nicoise, pates au pistou, ratatouille, gratin d'abricots aux amandes
14 mars / jessica lee : rainbow congee, hot + sour cabbage, minced "squab" in lettuce leaves, minced tofu in lettuce leaves, caramelized banana purses
15 mars / manal : fattoush, hummus, mankeesh, rice pudding
16 mars / diana : salad, meat + potato lasagna, vegetable lasagna, apple bundles
17 mars / jessica huot : salad, texas toast, penne rosa, pecan pie
28 mars / george : hommos bi tehini, tabbouleh, fassoliah wa riz, vegetable fassoliah wa riz, ben and jerry's
29 mars / holly : potato gnocchi, stuffed mushrooms, orange sponge cake with meringue and dark chocolate sauce
30 mars / waseem : chickpea salad, boreg, orange juice chicken, chocolate chip cookies
31 mars / marissa : italian menu no. 6 : foccacia with ricotta and olive oil, spaghetti + meatballs, fettuccine with sundried tomato-olive-red pepper cream sauce, creamed spinach, pick-me-ups (aka chocolate chip cookie/chocolate chocolate chip cookie/oatmeal raisin/spice cookie ice cream sandwiches)
1 avril / v : empanadas, tinadtad + rice, pineapple surprise (one should never call anything "[insert random word] surprise." i am sure it will be good, but still...however, v, i forgive you because i love tinadtad.)
spring break : going, going, gone...
i think everyone, myself, included, thought i would be cooking more than i have this spring break. considering my finances, which took a hit after outlet shopping, you would better understand why i haven't cooked that much this spring break. on the upside, i now own a beautiful trifle bowl (i have coveted a trifle bowl for about two years now), many t-shirts and button-down shirts, silver leather sandals, and a beautiful yellow raincoat to keep my iridescent lime green rain jacket company in my closet. i didn't need the sandals, but i find shoes that i like (and can afford) so infrequently that when i do, i am generally compelled to buy them knowing that i will wear them enough to justify the cost (case in point: my black leather flats).
back to food. i have a couple of quickies to impart. in fact, to impart again because blogger really hates me right now and i'm rewriting this post. sadly, it will be abbreviated since i do not desire to rewrite the entire thing, but i encourage you to soldier on, anyway.
i had intended to do more work during break, but of course that's never the way it goes. first, on monday, i departed bright and early with luis for new york city, in order to visit MoMA per my 4.104 TA's instructions. sorry, leo, we didn't make it to dia, but at least i know what it is now. if i could have had my way with spring break, i would like to have gone to marfa, texas, to see donald judd's "100 untitled works in milled aluminum." i think that's what it was called. anyway, see the new york times magazine from last saturday if you're confused.
back to MoMA. the line was looooong. MoMA and the guggenheim are the only museums open on mondays, so go figure. the building itself is gorgeous - all perfect proportions and perfectly placed windows in the way that a beautiful actress is all legs. and because this is my food blog, i will digress and move onto the food. did i mention that every inch of this museum is gorgeous? yoshio taniguchi, i love you and will marry you unless tadao ando asks me first. to get to the point, even the cafe on the second floor - the plebeian, proletarian level eating (as opposed to the restaurant on the top floor for the high rollers). step into cafe 2 and order your food, then sit down at the long, minimalist wooden tables that are delightfully communal. the communal thing was completely unexpected, and we discovered that there are nice people in new york city. or, nice tourists; the people next to us offered us their extra cookie before they left. the food is, of course, expensive, as museum food is wont to be, but it was worth it. plus, i hope part of the price inflation went to the waiters, who don't really get tipped because the turnover of diners is so frenetic. anyway, for lunch i had possibly the best panini of my life. well, not just possibly - i'll take a stand like i'm always being encouraged to do in studio. i had the best panini of my life, in a museum cafe in new york city. if you're italian from italy, you probably want to slap me for saying this, but at least know that i have been to italy and had panini there. the panini i had was a simple prosciutto, fontina, and rocket deal. but it was hot and the bread was wonderfully crusty, and the fontina was so good and melty...rarely do i like designer greens, but the rocket was actually good. i had never actually had fontina before, and now i understand why other people like it so much. and i wasn't really that hungry, so you can't accuse me of enjoying it just because i was ravenous enough for anything to look good.
this isn't food related, but the people who offered us the cookie left shortly after we sat down. they were replaced by two old women. i usually try not to perpetuate stereotypes, but they sat down and immediately wondered (a) where their food was and (b) if one of the waiters was going to come clear the dishes that were still on the table (after looking at us and wondering in a non-subtle manner if they were ours). the previous party's number was still clipped to the spot, and i started to take it off, to help them, but one of the women stopped me and left it there. and of course, about a minute later a waiter comes with food for table #91. except the old women really had a different number - #91 was the number of the previous party. the wrong food was brought and the two women tell the waiter what they've ordered. he leaves and one woman starts complaining to the other: "really, ursula..." another waiter came by and asked ursula for her receipt. she gave it over extremely reluctantly, testily demanding that he bring it back tout de suite; he looks at the receipt, immediately discerns the problem, and gracefully pretends it's all his fault. oh, ursula.
a note about the lighting - even the lighting in the cafe was perfect. there is no direct light in this building, which is wonderful. yoshio taniguchi, i love you and i will marry you, unless tadao ando asks me first. the lighting in the cafe is such that the fixtures point upwards and the light reflects off these white square panels that extend about 6 inches from the ceiling. the result: square expanses of warm white light.
the second quickie is really a quickie. jessica and i can cross lala rokh off our list of restaurants we need to go to before jessica leaves for oxford. it was pretty good - exotic food is always fun - but slightly less well executed than, say, cafe baraka, which is slightly more exotic than lala rokh. if that's because it was lunch and not dinner, i don't know. the restaurant itself is a nice place to eat, and the food seems to be authentic and wonderfully exotic, but at the end of the day i could have made the same thing myself, at home. i had a great barley soup with shreds of carrot in it, then a wrap with saffron chicken and saffroned potatoes. jessica had this fabulous appetizer of a flourless herb cake, which was great if not quite my speed - it will take me a bit longer before i really like anything that has so many herbs in it. but what lunch at lala rokh really made me do is wish that celina had done another persian menu at lmf before she moved.
and finally, a short plug which i would generally not make. every now and then, my favorite food magazines turn out really spectacular issues. like that issue of gourmet with the extensively footnoted article about the maine lobster festival (footnotes! in a food magazine!) and gorgeous, gorgeous photos of food in the summer. the new issue of gourmet has a great article about a woman who starts celebrating passover just so she can make her grandmother's brisket (a funny parallel: jessica and i are having an easter brunch expressly to have mimosas), and an entertaining article by calvin trillin about two dinners in Paris, one of which involves a deep love for perfect dumplings. then, the new issue of saveur is all about american artisanal cheeses. i love cheese and i hope you do too.
p.s. to my mother: i adore chicken pot pie (and you know it), and i adore it when you bring me your chicken pot pie, which inexplicably gets better every time you make it. thanks, and much love.
back to food. i have a couple of quickies to impart. in fact, to impart again because blogger really hates me right now and i'm rewriting this post. sadly, it will be abbreviated since i do not desire to rewrite the entire thing, but i encourage you to soldier on, anyway.
i had intended to do more work during break, but of course that's never the way it goes. first, on monday, i departed bright and early with luis for new york city, in order to visit MoMA per my 4.104 TA's instructions. sorry, leo, we didn't make it to dia, but at least i know what it is now. if i could have had my way with spring break, i would like to have gone to marfa, texas, to see donald judd's "100 untitled works in milled aluminum." i think that's what it was called. anyway, see the new york times magazine from last saturday if you're confused.
back to MoMA. the line was looooong. MoMA and the guggenheim are the only museums open on mondays, so go figure. the building itself is gorgeous - all perfect proportions and perfectly placed windows in the way that a beautiful actress is all legs. and because this is my food blog, i will digress and move onto the food. did i mention that every inch of this museum is gorgeous? yoshio taniguchi, i love you and will marry you unless tadao ando asks me first. to get to the point, even the cafe on the second floor - the plebeian, proletarian level eating (as opposed to the restaurant on the top floor for the high rollers). step into cafe 2 and order your food, then sit down at the long, minimalist wooden tables that are delightfully communal. the communal thing was completely unexpected, and we discovered that there are nice people in new york city. or, nice tourists; the people next to us offered us their extra cookie before they left. the food is, of course, expensive, as museum food is wont to be, but it was worth it. plus, i hope part of the price inflation went to the waiters, who don't really get tipped because the turnover of diners is so frenetic. anyway, for lunch i had possibly the best panini of my life. well, not just possibly - i'll take a stand like i'm always being encouraged to do in studio. i had the best panini of my life, in a museum cafe in new york city. if you're italian from italy, you probably want to slap me for saying this, but at least know that i have been to italy and had panini there. the panini i had was a simple prosciutto, fontina, and rocket deal. but it was hot and the bread was wonderfully crusty, and the fontina was so good and melty...rarely do i like designer greens, but the rocket was actually good. i had never actually had fontina before, and now i understand why other people like it so much. and i wasn't really that hungry, so you can't accuse me of enjoying it just because i was ravenous enough for anything to look good.
this isn't food related, but the people who offered us the cookie left shortly after we sat down. they were replaced by two old women. i usually try not to perpetuate stereotypes, but they sat down and immediately wondered (a) where their food was and (b) if one of the waiters was going to come clear the dishes that were still on the table (after looking at us and wondering in a non-subtle manner if they were ours). the previous party's number was still clipped to the spot, and i started to take it off, to help them, but one of the women stopped me and left it there. and of course, about a minute later a waiter comes with food for table #91. except the old women really had a different number - #91 was the number of the previous party. the wrong food was brought and the two women tell the waiter what they've ordered. he leaves and one woman starts complaining to the other: "really, ursula..." another waiter came by and asked ursula for her receipt. she gave it over extremely reluctantly, testily demanding that he bring it back tout de suite; he looks at the receipt, immediately discerns the problem, and gracefully pretends it's all his fault. oh, ursula.
a note about the lighting - even the lighting in the cafe was perfect. there is no direct light in this building, which is wonderful. yoshio taniguchi, i love you and i will marry you, unless tadao ando asks me first. the lighting in the cafe is such that the fixtures point upwards and the light reflects off these white square panels that extend about 6 inches from the ceiling. the result: square expanses of warm white light.
the second quickie is really a quickie. jessica and i can cross lala rokh off our list of restaurants we need to go to before jessica leaves for oxford. it was pretty good - exotic food is always fun - but slightly less well executed than, say, cafe baraka, which is slightly more exotic than lala rokh. if that's because it was lunch and not dinner, i don't know. the restaurant itself is a nice place to eat, and the food seems to be authentic and wonderfully exotic, but at the end of the day i could have made the same thing myself, at home. i had a great barley soup with shreds of carrot in it, then a wrap with saffron chicken and saffroned potatoes. jessica had this fabulous appetizer of a flourless herb cake, which was great if not quite my speed - it will take me a bit longer before i really like anything that has so many herbs in it. but what lunch at lala rokh really made me do is wish that celina had done another persian menu at lmf before she moved.
and finally, a short plug which i would generally not make. every now and then, my favorite food magazines turn out really spectacular issues. like that issue of gourmet with the extensively footnoted article about the maine lobster festival (footnotes! in a food magazine!) and gorgeous, gorgeous photos of food in the summer. the new issue of gourmet has a great article about a woman who starts celebrating passover just so she can make her grandmother's brisket (a funny parallel: jessica and i are having an easter brunch expressly to have mimosas), and an entertaining article by calvin trillin about two dinners in Paris, one of which involves a deep love for perfect dumplings. then, the new issue of saveur is all about american artisanal cheeses. i love cheese and i hope you do too.
p.s. to my mother: i adore chicken pot pie (and you know it), and i adore it when you bring me your chicken pot pie, which inexplicably gets better every time you make it. thanks, and much love.
review: a legal victory at aujourd'hui
i originally wrote this about a week ago, while i was in studio one early morning. unfortunately, lame-athena (an earlier version that is what scarpa, the uber-old, uber-slow athena machine in studio) wouldn't let me post this then, so here it is now.
* * *
when they asked us if we were celebrating a special occasion, keith glibly replied "a legal victory." no need to elaborate that it was waseem's collection of the award from his small claims telemarketing claim. shortly thereafter, keith was mortified when they asked if we were all overage; soon after that, keith was mortified when he asked for a glass of milk...en francais. the waiter: "sorry, i don't speak french."
a brief word or two about the decor and atmosphere before the important stuff (the food, naturally). i would have to say that the lighting was absolutely perfect. i wasn't really a fan of the decor in general, though - probably because i don't tend to like patterns, especially patterns with flowers. the colors were great, though - all muted grays, blues, and browns, and i did like the fact that one wall was the wine collection.
and on to the food. first of all, they had a rather unusual bread selection - white roll, potato roll, rosemary flatbread, and walnut bread. a little different than sel de la terre, which is the gold standard in restaurant bread - especially in the choice of that flatbread. it was kind of odd - and not to say that it wasn't good, since it was great - it was nevertheless incongruous with the general idea of bread to start a meal. the potato roll was surprisingly potato-y, for those of us who are accustomed to the egg-yolk-yellow of sliced potato bread from the supermarket. it was rather nice, and in my opinion the best of the bread.
and first courses - i had the pork shank as an appetizer. the thing that surprised me most was the sheer quantity of food at this restaurant. It was a little bit too much - granted, it was expensive, but you're paying for the experience of the meal and perfect proportions - it's not an all-you-can-eat. your money's worth is a perfectly orchestrated meal, not an overfull stomach.
that aside, the appetizer was great. it came on top of a bed of green...stuff...i forget exactly what it was...as well as a tiny salad of mache, and a few pieces of sauteed leek. the plate was also drizzled with truffle cream, which was really the reason why i'd picked that appetizer, having never had truffle cream before. it was quite lovely, especially with the truffle cream, which tasted wonderfully earthy.
oh! we had an amuse-bouche (which touched us off on the topic of the phrase amuse-guele, which is sometimes used in place of amuse-bouche, though guele is a pejorative word) of onions with pastis and a bit of...darn, i forget what the green stuff was. i believe there was the word carrot in there too, somewhere. anyway, it was a surprisingly good combination of flavors - very clean and refreshing.
on to the second course. jessica had the vegetable gnocchi, natalia and keith had the venison, carrie had the veal, waseem had the beef tenderloin, and i had the duck. jessica and i also shared "forbidden rice risotto," which was really great with all of the cheese in it. i'm not so sure it had enough forbidden rice in it to call it "forbidden rice risotto," but it was good nonetheless. jessica's gnocchi had truffle foam on it, which was one of the spectacular accomplishments of the meal - the actual texture in your mouth was so emphemeral, but the flavor was stunning. It's too bad they don't sell essence of truffle in bottles.
the duck i got was done two ways - a leg and a breast - which seemed like an enormous amount of duck, as i'm used to just a breast. it was nice to have both light and dark meat, though the leg was slightly oversalted. the leg came over a toasted piece of brioche, which i'm not convinced was actually brioche, but which was a fabulous combination with the duck, and a clever way (i have no idea if this was actually the intention of the chef) of paying homage to the way that the French use bread to sop up
anything and everything. the duck also came with sauteed endives with a watermelon relish. i have to say that i wasn't impressed with the watermelon relish, but the taste of endives has really grown on me in the past couple of years. the duck breast, however, was perfect. i had a glass of hang time (robert mondavi really has his fingers in everything) with my meal, and even that seemed enormous even when taking into account that the glass was large.
and finally, dessert. i can confidently say that there have been a few truly fabulous desserts in my life. in random order: the grand marnier chocolate pot de creme at cyclops in seattle, jessica's rote gruze and iles flottantes, ice cream at craigie street bistrot, the hazelnut souffle at l'espalier, and now the honey cake at aujourd'hui. the dessert consisted of a small honey cake shaped like a fez in the middle of a long rectangular plate. the cake, about the size of a dixie cup, sat on a smear of a cassis sauce (great color). to the left was a small glass cup (shaped like the holy grail from
the meal ended with a two-tiered tea plate of tiny sweets - tiny (the size of a nickel) pistachio butter cookies, peach gummies (go figure, i have no idea why), tiny chocolates made of meringue and hazelnut ganache, tiny pink meringues, and little clusters of what looked to be coconut and white chocolate. i first had this sort of thing at l'espalier, and i must say that it's a wonderful thing to have at the end of a meal - having everyone share tiny tidbits of fun things. it was quite the surprise when they came out with another basket of sweets, after the tea service - a little basket of house-made marzipan with a raspberry chocolate filling, dipped in chocolate. the mark of a good chocolate is a thin coating of chocolate around the filling - too many chocolates have very thick coatings of chocolate. anyway, the marzipan bit was probably my favorite of the sweets at the the end, though i am rather biased since i am slowly eating away at the chunk of marzipan that jessica gave me back in january (that one would usually cook with, or at least use for something more glamourous than eating).
in retrospect, i am glad to have gone to aujourd'hui. i believe that that was the best service i've ever had at a restaurant, but i think that the balance of the food was slightly off. i enjoyed the food at
04 mars 2005
supersnazzy versus plain jane
i decided on tuesday afternoon that i'd had enough of studio and classes (i have this feeling that i'm supposed to go to studio every day, even though it's not true), and skipped 11.012 in favor of taking care of my shriveled bananas. i poked one of the clementines that was on top of them, and surmised that since they were quite squishy - in that way that the peel is still tough but you just know it's squishy inside - i should skip peeling them for fear of finding them completely greenish black inside.
anyway, this is all just a very convoluted and longhand way of saying that i stayed home and baked a (1) supersnazzy banana cake and a (2) plain jane banana bread with my seven shriveled bananas.
i had really wanted to make a layer cake - something elaborate to relax myself - but i had these bananas that were begging to be used and didn't really want to go all the way to star just for a cake i was going to sacrifice. there's no reason, i concluded, why i couldn't make my layer cake out of the banana bread (which is not really bread, anyway). consequently, the banana bread batter got scraped into a jelly roll pan and a 9x13 pan - the jelly roll bread for the layer cake, and the 9x13 pan for those not adventurous enough to eat the layer cake. of course, the 9x13 pan of banana bread was also a contingency plan, in the case that the layer cake was a disaster.
the idea for the banana layer cake - with thin layers because when you're in the mood for making layer cakes it must be thin layers - comes from a photo i saw in my sister's most recent issue of food & wine, in which there is a round banana cake layered with what i believe was whipped cream, coconut, and maybe some other stuff. at any rate, it was quite pretty, and as i didn't have any cream, i settled upon some sort of chocolate confection. much as i like chocolate chip banana bread, i seem to be unable to put any in mine.
the chocolate confection was, at first, just chocolate and butter. but chocolate and butter seemed to be a pretty one-dimensional combination. there was the chocolate for, well, chocolate, and butter for melt-in-your-mouth-could-only-be-butter texture, but nothing else, really. the chocolate was just chocolate chips, so we wouldn't be getting a particularly exciting chocolate taste - not that you would really need sophisticated chocolate for a banana cake. the easy fix, after scouting out the pantry, was cocoa powder (sifted in the lazy method with my left hand) and a can of coconut milk leftover from someone's menu back in mid-february. both cut the sweetness of the chocolate rather nicely, with the cocoa adding some punch to the chocolate factor.
the end result: 1/2" thick layers of cake, spread with chocolate "ganache," then scattered with thinly-sliced banana.
the (other) end result: a regular, rectangular banana bread. the nice thing about banana bread is that you really have to overbake it for a long time before you ruin it.
the end result in the morning: pans gone, and an uncharacteristically clean table left behind.
anyway, this is all just a very convoluted and longhand way of saying that i stayed home and baked a (1) supersnazzy banana cake and a (2) plain jane banana bread with my seven shriveled bananas.
i had really wanted to make a layer cake - something elaborate to relax myself - but i had these bananas that were begging to be used and didn't really want to go all the way to star just for a cake i was going to sacrifice. there's no reason, i concluded, why i couldn't make my layer cake out of the banana bread (which is not really bread, anyway). consequently, the banana bread batter got scraped into a jelly roll pan and a 9x13 pan - the jelly roll bread for the layer cake, and the 9x13 pan for those not adventurous enough to eat the layer cake. of course, the 9x13 pan of banana bread was also a contingency plan, in the case that the layer cake was a disaster.
the idea for the banana layer cake - with thin layers because when you're in the mood for making layer cakes it must be thin layers - comes from a photo i saw in my sister's most recent issue of food & wine, in which there is a round banana cake layered with what i believe was whipped cream, coconut, and maybe some other stuff. at any rate, it was quite pretty, and as i didn't have any cream, i settled upon some sort of chocolate confection. much as i like chocolate chip banana bread, i seem to be unable to put any in mine.
the chocolate confection was, at first, just chocolate and butter. but chocolate and butter seemed to be a pretty one-dimensional combination. there was the chocolate for, well, chocolate, and butter for melt-in-your-mouth-could-only-be-butter texture, but nothing else, really. the chocolate was just chocolate chips, so we wouldn't be getting a particularly exciting chocolate taste - not that you would really need sophisticated chocolate for a banana cake. the easy fix, after scouting out the pantry, was cocoa powder (sifted in the lazy method with my left hand) and a can of coconut milk leftover from someone's menu back in mid-february. both cut the sweetness of the chocolate rather nicely, with the cocoa adding some punch to the chocolate factor.
the end result: 1/2" thick layers of cake, spread with chocolate "ganache," then scattered with thinly-sliced banana.
the (other) end result: a regular, rectangular banana bread. the nice thing about banana bread is that you really have to overbake it for a long time before you ruin it.
the end result in the morning: pans gone, and an uncharacteristically clean table left behind.
27 février 2005
diner 27 fev - 4 mars : 'risotto storms french house'
27 fevrier / betsy : bread, spinach salad, zucchini casserole, strawberry sorbet
28 fevrier / lauren : black-eyed peas, collard greens, potato-cheddar bake, squash casserole, cornbread, peach cobbler
1 mars / keith : honey-apricot chicken, mushroom risotto with sundried tomatoes, banana splits
2 mars / nina : spinach salad with warm bacon dressing, risotto with wild mushrooms and peas, cinnamon swirl pound cake with almonds
3 mars / carrien : moroccan slow-cooked lamb, risotto, roasted vegetables, pretzels
4 mars / josh : tba
wow, three nights of risotto. menus have always tended to clump at lmf - meaning that suddenly we'll have tons of broccoli in one week, but generally we haven't had a clump of something as exotic as risotto.
28 fevrier / lauren : black-eyed peas, collard greens, potato-cheddar bake, squash casserole, cornbread, peach cobbler
1 mars / keith : honey-apricot chicken, mushroom risotto with sundried tomatoes, banana splits
2 mars / nina : spinach salad with warm bacon dressing, risotto with wild mushrooms and peas, cinnamon swirl pound cake with almonds
3 mars / carrien : moroccan slow-cooked lamb, risotto, roasted vegetables, pretzels
4 mars / josh : tba
wow, three nights of risotto. menus have always tended to clump at lmf - meaning that suddenly we'll have tons of broccoli in one week, but generally we haven't had a clump of something as exotic as risotto.
sensuous, glorious violet creams, how i love you
first (yes, first!), a digression : i have the most unsettling suspicion that i have undeniably american tastes in food. i unabashedly love chicken pot pie, cakes from mixes, fast food, and easymac. ok, maybe not easymac. and maybe the chicken pot pie is best when you expressly roast a chicken for it (while not particularly economically efficient, it is the best way to have pot pie). but cakes and brownies from mixes are unequivocally good. there's no comparison between the from-mix and scratch versions in my mind, because they're just totally different things - apples and bananas. or maybe apples and chinese pears. at any rate, i make up for it with my insane purist ways for other foods. cheesecake, for example, is only good plain, and preferably with a gingersnap crust. i will make one exception - for a key lime cheesecake - but it better be good.
anyway, this post was really to discuss the joy of violet creams. i was at cardullo's with nina - having waffled back and forth previously on whether or not to go at all before definitively deciding to go - and i was first attracted to the lovely, gorgeous, perfectly-proportioned bars of New Tree chocolate (see a picture here). their bars are non-gmo, 73% dark chocolate with additives like lemon zest and orange zest, and each of their 5 bars has a name - 'vigor' for coffee, 'forgiveness' for the lemon, 'pleasure' for the plain... i'm not sure if they're any good - i decided to shell out my five bucks for the violet creams instead - but they sure are gorgeous. i suppose it's the architect's bar of chocolate (with the 'vigor' bar as the most appropriate flavor).
and still you haven't heard about the violet creams. well, i was about to escape with my can of cassoulet (canned cassoulet, you ask? how could i even dare? read on.), threading my way through the fire-hazard-narrow aisles in search of nina, when i spotted them on a shelf. lonely, tossed asunder, i saw a pink box : rose creams. alack, no canary creams, and i'm not a huge fan of rose, despite the fact that it is really fun to sugar rose petals. but suddenly i saw the purple box - violet creams! i decided right then and there to blow my five bucks on these luscious-looking "dark chocolate with violet flavour fondant cream centres." undeniably british - by Beech's Fine Chocolates. essentially they're high-quality violet-flavored thin mints.
while we're on the subject of british food, i'd like the world to know that i love british food. yet another weird quirk in the strange world that is my food likes and dislikes. i love yorkshire puddings, figgy puddings, full english breakfasts...oh, i need to go back to england.
and finally, the canned cassoulet. as i had leftover chicken pot pie for dinner (by the way, the only correct topping for pot pie is a biscuit topping; then you eat it out of a bowl with a spoon), i had no need to open the can of cassoulet. but i've been eyeing that can of cassoulet for about a year now - thankfully not the same exact can - and i finally bought it. i've always wanted to make a real cassoulet, but i've never had the chance; neither have i had the chance to go sample the cassoulet at pigalle. i also have a moderately-consuming passion to see if canned foods are actually good. currently the canned foods i do like include: peas, corn, creamed corn, beans, wolfgang puck chicken tortilla soup (a surprisingly good canned soup) and tuna. canned foods i do not like: spaghetti-o's and all related canned foods (canned pasta has that gross pale tan color). when i've had the cassoulet i'll update you all on whether or not it's actually good. in jeffrey steingarten's article about when he made boudin noir, he canned it, so canned things must taste good occasionally. i've also wanted to try Caledonian Kitchen's canned haggis, ever since there was a blurb about it in Saveur, but that will have to wait until i get my next paycheck.
anyway, this post was really to discuss the joy of violet creams. i was at cardullo's with nina - having waffled back and forth previously on whether or not to go at all before definitively deciding to go - and i was first attracted to the lovely, gorgeous, perfectly-proportioned bars of New Tree chocolate (see a picture here). their bars are non-gmo, 73% dark chocolate with additives like lemon zest and orange zest, and each of their 5 bars has a name - 'vigor' for coffee, 'forgiveness' for the lemon, 'pleasure' for the plain... i'm not sure if they're any good - i decided to shell out my five bucks for the violet creams instead - but they sure are gorgeous. i suppose it's the architect's bar of chocolate (with the 'vigor' bar as the most appropriate flavor).
and still you haven't heard about the violet creams. well, i was about to escape with my can of cassoulet (canned cassoulet, you ask? how could i even dare? read on.), threading my way through the fire-hazard-narrow aisles in search of nina, when i spotted them on a shelf. lonely, tossed asunder, i saw a pink box : rose creams. alack, no canary creams, and i'm not a huge fan of rose, despite the fact that it is really fun to sugar rose petals. but suddenly i saw the purple box - violet creams! i decided right then and there to blow my five bucks on these luscious-looking "dark chocolate with violet flavour fondant cream centres." undeniably british - by Beech's Fine Chocolates. essentially they're high-quality violet-flavored thin mints.
while we're on the subject of british food, i'd like the world to know that i love british food. yet another weird quirk in the strange world that is my food likes and dislikes. i love yorkshire puddings, figgy puddings, full english breakfasts...oh, i need to go back to england.
and finally, the canned cassoulet. as i had leftover chicken pot pie for dinner (by the way, the only correct topping for pot pie is a biscuit topping; then you eat it out of a bowl with a spoon), i had no need to open the can of cassoulet. but i've been eyeing that can of cassoulet for about a year now - thankfully not the same exact can - and i finally bought it. i've always wanted to make a real cassoulet, but i've never had the chance; neither have i had the chance to go sample the cassoulet at pigalle. i also have a moderately-consuming passion to see if canned foods are actually good. currently the canned foods i do like include: peas, corn, creamed corn, beans, wolfgang puck chicken tortilla soup (a surprisingly good canned soup) and tuna. canned foods i do not like: spaghetti-o's and all related canned foods (canned pasta has that gross pale tan color). when i've had the cassoulet i'll update you all on whether or not it's actually good. in jeffrey steingarten's article about when he made boudin noir, he canned it, so canned things must taste good occasionally. i've also wanted to try Caledonian Kitchen's canned haggis, ever since there was a blurb about it in Saveur, but that will have to wait until i get my next paycheck.
26 février 2005
ringing in a belated chinese new year
jessica and i (or, to better describe it, jessica) decided to throw a chinese new year bash this year. we decided to celebrate the following weekend due to impending homework. on our ambitious, but not too ambitious menu: scallion pancakes, a lotus root salad, vegetable dumplings (with green har-gao-like skins), sticky rice packets (which have a name in chinese - maybe 'joong'?), rice noodle rolls with chinese broccoli in them, tea eggs, a new year cake, red bean sesame balls, pineapple buns, clementines, and oh, there was one more thing, something sweet...but i've forgotten. i would love to describe each one of the things we made, but this will be a brief blow-by-blow because i don't seem to be in a writing mood.
i'm always thrilled when something i make looks like it's genuinely the thing i was trying to make. somehow it makes me feel more successrul, which i suppose is natural since i'm trying to emulate the photo anyway - but the feeling of success is disproportionate to the situation. anyway, the pineapple buns were an example of this - we even baked them on this huge pan that looks like the ones they use in the real bakeries. the filling could have been better, but they looked so pretty! as did the tea eggs and the red bean sesame balls; i was most excited about the red bean sesame balls, which puff up slightly when you fry them, and turn golden brown where there aren't sesame seeds. they're actually pretty easy to make - you just mix rice flour with sugar water and take balls of it to make little pods - but i'm mystified as to how the bakeries make them in an efficient way.
quick hits:
- the indian take-out in the back of shalimar (next to libby's liquors in central square) is pretty good, and cheap - a mango lassi, samosa, and two entrees + rice for $6-7.
- the food sections of the new york times and globe have been lackluster in the past few weeks. there was a semi-interesting piece on some pastry classes in the globe recently, but that was the only high point. brownie points to the new york times, though, on its issue that involved food and fashion.
- actually, i tried the grapefruit-lemon marmalade from that issue. my resulting marmalade is a shade bitter, as marmalade is wont to be, but it smells wonderful and has a great color. now i just have to find people to foist it off on...as is usual, i was really just experimenting with making jam, rather than wanting actual marmalade. the most fascinating thing about the whole process was the fact that you extract the pectin from the fruit membranes (you put em in a cheesecloth bag and simmer it with the actual fruit). that part of the process is akin to when jessica and i made flaxseed goop as an egg replacer in a cake for our IAP class. the jam, consequently, gelled like a charm, which is the first time i've ever made jam successfully. who would have known that there was so much pectin in the membranes of the fruit? (besides harold mcgee.)
- a note about that cheesecloth bag: it is one of my most useful acquisitions, oddly enough. jessica and i used it to make paneer, then the flaxseed goop, and now extract pectin. i'm sure we've used it for other things, too... at any rate, all $3 investments that provide such a return are definitely worth it.
- when making red bean sesame balls, you make the sugar water with "brown sugar." available only at chinese supermarkets, it was called "poon tang" on epicurious.com's recipe for the sesame balls. but "brown sugar" is so typically chinese-in-the-united-states.
i'm always thrilled when something i make looks like it's genuinely the thing i was trying to make. somehow it makes me feel more successrul, which i suppose is natural since i'm trying to emulate the photo anyway - but the feeling of success is disproportionate to the situation. anyway, the pineapple buns were an example of this - we even baked them on this huge pan that looks like the ones they use in the real bakeries. the filling could have been better, but they looked so pretty! as did the tea eggs and the red bean sesame balls; i was most excited about the red bean sesame balls, which puff up slightly when you fry them, and turn golden brown where there aren't sesame seeds. they're actually pretty easy to make - you just mix rice flour with sugar water and take balls of it to make little pods - but i'm mystified as to how the bakeries make them in an efficient way.
quick hits:
- the indian take-out in the back of shalimar (next to libby's liquors in central square) is pretty good, and cheap - a mango lassi, samosa, and two entrees + rice for $6-7.
- the food sections of the new york times and globe have been lackluster in the past few weeks. there was a semi-interesting piece on some pastry classes in the globe recently, but that was the only high point. brownie points to the new york times, though, on its issue that involved food and fashion.
- actually, i tried the grapefruit-lemon marmalade from that issue. my resulting marmalade is a shade bitter, as marmalade is wont to be, but it smells wonderful and has a great color. now i just have to find people to foist it off on...as is usual, i was really just experimenting with making jam, rather than wanting actual marmalade. the most fascinating thing about the whole process was the fact that you extract the pectin from the fruit membranes (you put em in a cheesecloth bag and simmer it with the actual fruit). that part of the process is akin to when jessica and i made flaxseed goop as an egg replacer in a cake for our IAP class. the jam, consequently, gelled like a charm, which is the first time i've ever made jam successfully. who would have known that there was so much pectin in the membranes of the fruit? (besides harold mcgee.)
- a note about that cheesecloth bag: it is one of my most useful acquisitions, oddly enough. jessica and i used it to make paneer, then the flaxseed goop, and now extract pectin. i'm sure we've used it for other things, too... at any rate, all $3 investments that provide such a return are definitely worth it.
- when making red bean sesame balls, you make the sugar water with "brown sugar." available only at chinese supermarkets, it was called "poon tang" on epicurious.com's recipe for the sesame balls. but "brown sugar" is so typically chinese-in-the-united-states.
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