Beets, Bloody Beets

Oh my, where does the time go? I know it's been a while, but I've been racked by curiosity about the tasty things I know you ladies are eating. I'm especially looking at you, T-cakes, and the things you must have eaten in Poland! Although I'm sure Vis-biscuits has exotic menus to report as well. So, the most exciting dish I've made recently is the beet risotto from the that book with the author holding a wooden spoon authoritatively. This is not actually my photo, but it looked exactly like that and was very tasty. I think I will be making it for Halloween dinner & movie night (which will be mellow in honor of the ban on partying in the Castro - did you know that 10 people got wounded with gun shots last year?), with some suitable accompaniments. Last year, I had black pasta(it's made with squid ink) with something less memorable, and black caviar, and of course, sangria. Any movie suggestions? That are not too scary, as the hostess is very delicate.

Cute food.

School's almost over for me, so it's time to resume a more important task: food-blogging! Today I went to the Bazaar Bizarre, an indie crafts fair. The place was packed! There was a line around the block! I guess people like their alt-crafts. Anyway, one of the vendors was selling plush toys modelled after food, like donuts (see above), burnt toast, and cupcakes. Super tres cute! Check out the toys here. More mad-cute toys at Plush Rush (albeit mostly not food-themed).

Hot Buttered Soul

. . . is the name of a great album by Isaac Hayes, better known for his soundtrack for the blaxploitation film Shaft. The last song on this album, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," is an 18+ minute epic song about the woman who done him wrong, and it's one of my favorite songs ever!


Here's a couple more things to keep your soul hot and buttered this winter. Serve with hot buttered cakes! (okay, that might be overkill)

Hot Buttered Rum

It snowed yesterday for the first time this fall/winter season, so I made this tasty drink to stave off the encroaching cold. Of course, Boston weather being as erratic as it is, the temperature's back to 60 degrees today.

2 measures / 3 tbsp dark rum
1-2 tsp raw or brown sugar
1/4-1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp butter

Put the ingredients in a mug and stir together. Fill the mug with boiling water and stir to dissolve. Enjoy!

Hot Buttered Tea (Poecha)

The infamous Tibetan buttered tea! According to the Tibetan cookbook The Lhasa Moon Tibetan Cookbook that I just got from Dinner (thanks!), the slightly salty tea is "consumed in large amounts as people sip it all day to keep warm and avoid dehydration in the high altitude ... the salt provides a correct electrolyte balance." It's a bit of an acquired taste ... a taste I have yet to acquire, to be honest.

4 black tea bags
1 1/2 c. milk
2-4 tbsp butter
3/4 tsp. salt

Pour 2 c. boiling water over the tea bags and steep for 5 minutes. Remove the tea bags and add the remaining ingredients to the concentrated tea. Boil another kettle of water. Pour 1/3 of the concentrated tea into a blender. Add 2 1/3 c. boiling water, blend briefly, and serve immediately. For refills, repeat for two more batches.

New York!

We went to New York last weekend to celebrate Mr. D's birthday. After seeing Brooklyn band Oneida at the Mercury Lounge, we headed over to Katz's Delicatessen (205 E. Houston Street). Usually, our late-night Jewish deli cravings in New York are satisfied by Veselka (on 2nd ave., which is open 24 hours a day), but Katz's was just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Mercury Lounge so we gave it a try. Upon entering the deli, we were each handed a ticket and told to hold on to it or else. Several signs around the deli told us that we'd have to pay $50 if we lost our tickets. The reason was soon apparent, as our tickets were marked as we ordered our food; D. got a kosher hot dog and a vanilla egg cream, and I got a potato knish with sour cream.

Katz's has a bit of a cheap greasy spoon feel to it, with the floors covered in worn vinyl and walls in fake wood paneling. The wall across from the food counters are covered with celebrity photographs. In addition to prepared food, you can buy pounds of meat from the meat counter, where big salamis hang in rows behind the counter. Looking around, I saw a sign that said "where Harry Met Sally!" (where the orgasm scene took place in the film, apparently) and also the one below:





We liked Katz's enough to return the next day after seeing some live music at Tonic. This time I had some potato pancakes with sour cream and apple sauce, which again were tasty. The food is probably on par with our other favorite, Veselka, but on the other hand it's not as nice looking or clean while being similarly priced (e.g. the potato pancakes were about $7-8 for three, the sandwiches were about $12). It's worth going there if you're pretty close by and get the munchies, though. Just don't lose that ticket before you're ready to pay!

The other restaurant we went to was Trattoria Dell'Arte, a fancy Italian restaurant close to Carnegie Hall. (D's mom was paying, so we were allowed to splurge a little bit.) You can easily recognize the restaurant from the street because there's a giant sculpture of a nose hanging on the front. Inside, there are also giant sculptures and large drawings of other body parts such as an eye and a giant breast. (I was looking around for the giant penis, to no avail.) D. and I shared Insalata di Bietole, an appetizer with beets, endive, asparagus, and gorgonzola cheese, an interesting combination of foodstuffs, particularly with the nice contrast between the sweet beets and the mildly bitter endive. For the main course, D.'s mom had some food from the antipasto bar, I had the Rigatoni alla Melazane (with eggplant, mushrooms, capers, pomodoro and ricotta salata), and D. had Vermicelli di Mare (seafood pasta with lobster, shrimp, clams, and mussels in a white wine sauce). My dish was pretty good, a little salty, but D.'s mom got the best thing since she wisely ordered a combination platter of different pastas and salads, which included some nicely cooked octopus which I was allowed to sample from her plate. (I attempted to cook this octopus recipe once without having eaten octopus before; it was a little too chewy as you're supposed to cook it for quite a while to get the right texture, and I got impatient towards the end.) The best part of the meal was dessert; we split a big piece of panettone covered in fudge sauce and served with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. The panettone was a light sweet bread with bits of dried fruit baked in; I think there was also banana in this one (?), or at least parts of this panettone had a soft, moist texture. The fudge sauce was mildly bitter good-quality chocolate, sufficiently rich and not too sweet. Lovely stuff.

And then I went to use the ladies'. Now, this generally wouldn't merit a mention at all, but the restroom was totally nuts. Okay, there was a restroom attendant, which I've come to expect, but when I went to wash my hands, the counters were covered with various toiletries like hand moisturizer, hairspray, floss, mouthwash, breathmints, etc. I guess the restaurant provides this stuff for image-conscious New Yorkers heading to Carnegie Hall after dinner, which is reasonable. I was about to use the mouthwash, but the restroom attendant was hanging out, probably expecting a tip (there was a little basket with a couple of dollar bills already in it), so I ran out quickly.

So those were our exciting New York dining experiences. We're hoping to try a dim sum restaurant next time we visit -- any suggestions?

Five recent tastes.

1. Tonala tequila. My sis got this for me for my birthday. It comes in a neat squarish ceramic container which is painted white with blue sunburst patterns around the top and sides and which will probably turn into a vase after the tequila is just a sweet but distant memory. I've only had one shot so far, but it's very smooth-drinking, much better than the only other tequila I've had, Jose Cuervo (not suprising). This tequila is labeled "anejo," meaning it's pure agave tequilia that's been aged in small oak casks for one to four years. (There are also two other types of pure agave tequilas: respado, which is aged for a few months, and blanco or "white," which is bottled without aging; as well as the cheaper "mixto," which is a combination of fermenting agave juices with other sugars and water.)
2. Abita Purple Haze. I've decided I'm more of a beer fan than a wine fan, mostly because it's a lot cheaper. The Abita website describes Purple Haze as "lager with a subtle purple coloration and haze, a fruity aroma, and a tartly sweet taste," which I'll go along with. The Abita brewery is Louisiana-based, so I was worried that they would be gone with the wind, but they're still around and apparently holding Katrina benefits for their unfortunate compatriots.
3. Butternut Squash with Shallots and Sage. I haven't been cooking very much, as I've been very busy with school and teaching and visiting home, and then this weekend I will be going to New York. Here's a recent favorite side dish, though. Butternut squash is really tasty and pleasingly colorful. I prefer to get the kind that is already cut into 1" cubes as it's miserable hard work cutting a whole butternut squash into small cubes, especially with the crappy $10 knife that I've got. Anyway, if you have any other butternut squash suggestions, I'm all ears.
4. Tamarind Bay. Mr. D and I went to this Harvard Square Indian restaurant for my birthday. For an appetizer, we had lamb liver with some spices; I have no idea which ones, but they were tasty and interesting. It was the first time I'd had liver, and I decided that I wasn't that crazy about the strangely smooth texture of liver and the somewhat off-key taste. Who knows, maybe it's a taste I'll eventually acquire. For our entrees, he had tandoori salmon with yogurt sauce, while I had lamb meatballs with pinenuts in a curry sauce. I'm not sure why he ordered that salmon as he doesn't like yogurt too much. In addition, tandoori stuff, taste-wise, always seems a little boring to me, and this was no exception. I liked my dish okay but it was a little too salty, like many of the other dishes we had. (And I spend too much time thinking about the price of the meal while eating, which detracts from the experience; my entree, for example, cost more than $4 per 1.5" meatball.) For our bread, we had rosemary naan; the rosemary stuck like pine needles in our throats, so we couldn't even finish it. For dessert, which was my favorite part, we shared a condensed milk dessert, which actually turned out to be spongy patties in a sweet yellow broth (possibly a mango/coconut combination??) which I happily slurped down after the patties were gone. I've been reading rave reviews of this place for ages, but we were kinda disappointed. Everything was fresher than at most restaurants, but the tastes were too dry or austere for our palates.
5. Bo Bo Cha Cha. No, not a strange ballroom dance of some sort, but a Malaysian dessert with yams in coconut milk that Mr. D and I like to eat at Penang, along with Pulut Hitam, a rice pudding made with black glutinous rice. It reminds me of che, a favorite dessert that my mom makes at home. Che is basically any sweet Vietnamese soup, often made with various kinds of beans like mung bean or red bean. Here is a fairly typical example.

Chinese food Sunday

The boy and I went to a little Chinese restaurant on Mass Ave on Sunday called Qingdao Garden for brunch. (It's named after the same city as Tsingtao beer.) A Chinese friend of mine in my department recommended it for dim sum. It was a bit out of the way, probably a good 15 minute walk from the Porter T-stop. Mr. D was very hungry by the time we got there at 1 pm; unfortunately, as the restaurant was only staffed by one waiter, we had a wait before we could get the menus and order. We had two orders of dumplings, which were called "three delight dumplings" and "fried meat buns" on the menu. The three delight dumplings were steamed, whereas the fried meat buns were steamed dumplings that were then pan-fried, forming a nice solid crispy bottom. Mr. D joked that they were the opposite of me: crispy on top, but soft on bottom :). Being oinkers, we also had sweet and sour pickled cucumbers, fried cruller, spareribs with mushrooms, and an order of rice, all of which were pretty good. We felt that the restaurant had an "authentic" flavor, lots of distinctive tastes, unlike eating dim sum at some restaurants in Chinatown where many of the dishes have a homogenous taste to them. It's not gourmet food, but it's good food. It's a bit of the schlep to get there but we'd probably go there again.

After that huge meal I walked home (3.5 miles!) and lazed about in the afternoon. For dinner, we ate a dish that I make fairly often, mainly because it's easy for me to remember the ingredients when I'm at the store and also because it's easy to make:

Stir-fried Beef with Broccoli and Mushrooms

3/4 lb. beef, sirloin or chuck, thinly sliced
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. sherry
2 tsp. cornstarch
2 tsp. sesame oil
3/4 lb. broccoli, cut into florets
4 tbsp. peanut oil
1 tbsp. ginger, cut into shreds
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
6 oz. white mushrooms, sliced into 1/4-inch slices
3 tbsp. oyster sauce
3 scallions, thinly sliced

Add the soy sauce, cornstarch, sherry, and sesame oil to the beef and marinate for 20 minutes. While the beef is marinating, cook the broccoli in boiling salted water for about 3-4 minutes. (Note: I like my broccoli softer than most people seem to, so maybe 2-3 minutes would be better.) Drain and set aside in a bowl.

Heat 2 tbsp peanut oil in a skillet over high heat. When hot, add the beef and stir-fry for a few minutes until the beef is brown. Remove the beef and liquids to the broccoli bowl.

Wipe the skillet clean, and heat the remaining 2 tbsp peanut oil in the skillet over high heat. Add the garlic, ginger, and mushrooms and fry for 2-3 minutes, then add the oyster sauce. Heat until bubbling, then add the broccoli, beef, and scallions. Remove from heat, and serve with rice.

A cross between recipes from Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food and Ken Hom's Chinese Cooking, so it's probably far from definitive/authentic.

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On a non-Chinese-food-related note, I made this Red Wine Spaghetti with Broccoli recipe today. As you can see from the picture, the results are pretty funky-looking; the red wine dyes the spaghetti a purplish color, and then for contrast you have the green broccoli. The taste? Not bad, tasting strongly of the wine used, which in my case was an $8 bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz. I think it would work better as an accompaniment rather than a main course.

Read 'em and weep

11 lbs of cheesecake in 9 minutes

65 hardboiled eggs in 6 minutes, 40 seconds

8.4 lbs baked beans in 2 minutes, 47 seconds

44 Maine lobsters in 12 minutes

Not all at once, of course.

My stove ROCKS

I would like to share the picture of my stove. My 80 year old landlady Agnes says her mom used to cook on it a long time ago, so how old is it? I don't know. But it looks cool and works great - it has really big even burners that are very smoothly adjustable and it has a knob for relighting pilot lights! It also has matching shakers on that little shelf that say "Sugar" and "Flour". Why would you need such a little flour container? My guess is for gravies.