Last week I went out to dinner to Del Posto with two of my friends to bid adieu to one of them who is moving to San Francisco. We actually selected the enoteca part of Del Posto, which appeared to have a smaller, less expensive menu, but still looked wonderful. We were kind of expecting to be seated in a dungeonous basement or something, but we had a great table, near the front of the restaurant (I guess they consider the dungeon the front).
Our waiter appeared almost immediately to take our drink order, one of my friends (the one moving, I'll call her SF) had a glass of prosecco so my other friend (I'll call her NY) and I ordered one as well. The waiter inquired whether or not we were celebrating something (all the prosecco being ordered I suspect was the reason why he was inquiring), and NY indicated that SF was moving away, so not really a celebration of sorts, but a fun evening nonetheless. The waiter returned with the bottle and filled up a glass for myself, NY, and then topped off SF's glass. At that point we knew that we'd be in for a great evening.
We decided that we would go for the tasting menu, which included five courses: appetizer, two pastas, a secondo plate and dessert. Each individual ordered her own appetizer, secondo and dessert while the table selected two pasta dishes and everyone got the two same pasta courses. I had announced that I was happy to share (it was a special occasion afterall), so we all ordered different things and selected the pastas. We did not, however, have to select the dessert options when we ordered the rest of the food. Which was good because selected the four other options was tough enough at that point.
Our food began arriving at the table, course after course of wonderful morsels of all sorts of things, steak, pork, pasta, fish, calamari, asparagus...it was all wonderful. We wondered why the restaurant wasn't busier, the food was great, and while the selection wasn't as large as the main restaurant, there was still plenty to choose from, and it was cheaper too. The service was impeccable, and we had no trouble making a reservation (they only take same day reservations). Reviews of the main part of the restaurant often indicate overpriced and poor service for what you're paying..clearly this would be the answer to all of those complaints. Perhaps now that I'm writing about it, the word is out...then again, definitely not (as much as I'd like to believe more than 2 people read this, somehow I doubt that enoteca will be mobbed anytime soon because of my post).
Once we started getting closer to dessert, the conversation slowly turned to what our dessert selections were going to be. Both NY and SF are very well aware of both my dessert infatuation and my unwillingness to share. I however, committed to sharing my dessert like a normal nice person would (it was either the alcohol talking at that point or perhaps I'm actually learning to share...maybe I'll graduate to 1st grade at some point soon...we could only hope). Once I had committed to sharing we agreed to all get different things. This was a much tougher negotiation, there were a couple of stand out items, but after a short round table discussion we came away with our dessert agenda:
SF was to get a chocolate almond cake thing
NY was getting a sorbet/prosecco
I was getting the chocolate pudding
I was excited and ready to order (and I'd have to say that I was most excited for the chocolate almond cake). The waiter came back and SF ordered first, and to my great dismay, after she ordered he instructed her to pick something else. but, but, the chocolate almond cake! How could they be out?! After my loud groan of disappointment the waiter replied that he was planning on bring one of those for the table! Happy with our stroke of good luck, SF quickly selected a blueberry cake thing. Next up to order was NY, and once she completed her order, the waiter told her that her selection was more of a palate cleanser, and he recommended that she too pick something else. She actually kind of was interesting in the palate cleansing dessert (we had afterall, just consumed four other courses), so she indicated that was ok with her, and the waiter replied, with what was now becoming a pattern, that he'd bring one for the table and she should pick something else. Shocked yet again, she selected a lemon thing (I don't remember it exactly, whether it was more of a cake/bar type thing or a custard/brulee type thing, or perhaps neither of those). I went to order my pudding, kind of expecting at this point to be ordered to select something different, but at that point we had pretty much everything off the dessert menu ordered for our table, so my chocolate pudding was accepted by the waiter.
And then the flow of desserts started, five in all were delivered to our table. It was dessert heaven for me (just in shear volume of sugar treats covering our table). My friends agreed that I must have dessert karma of some sort, as neither of them had ever been to a restaurant and been offered so many extra free desserts. I think that my experience at per se was perhaps on their mind, but per se wasn't even the first time that I received extra dessert (although the other places I can think of were either very high end, or I had poor service or something and requested a free dessert...like the time I was in Toronto with SF and some of our other friends and I got a MASSIVE banana split with SPARKLERS coming out of it, just to name one other time).
I'd like to believe I have dessert karma, what a great thing! Of course, my mom would tell me, like she always used to, that I'm going to give myself diabetes (which, I didn't actually ever believe was possible, I thought she was just trying to scare me...turns out she was right, you can get diabetes from eating too much sugar). It's really not a bad thing to have going for you, dessert karma, despite the sugar infestation that will most likely one day take over me. I'm going to ride it out as long as I can!
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Farmer's Market Salad
I haven't really had the opportunity yet this summer to hit the farmer's market. Last weekend I really started to get the itch to go as all the fruits started appearing en masse at the grocery store. So I planned to devote this Saturday morning to the market. Despite my overwhelming excitement, I slept in (so I probably missed all the good stuff), and only managed to drag myself out of the apartment after downing a cappuccino.
I love the farmer's market. Especially in the summer. Especially when it's 68 degrees and sunny. Especially when it's overflowing with fruits and veggies and flowers and bread and cheeses and jams and honey and everything else under the sun. It's not only that I'm getting fresh delicious things, but I think I also feel a sense of well-being because I'm helping the local farmers. I'm sure that some of the stands are not small farms, but no matter, I always come away from the market with more bags than I can carry, a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a glowing feeling.
Today was a perfect day for the farmers market (you may have guessed that it was 68 and sunny with a light cool breeze). I finally arrived close to 11, a little late by the farmer's market standard, but there was certainly still a ton of fresh goodness to pick from. I started with cherries, which must be in season because every stand had an overflowing amount of them. I grabbed my little pint and went to pay. The gentleman asked me if I wanted the pint basket and I said no and he thanked me and threw in a couple more handfuls of cherries into my bag. This is why I love the farmers market! Everyone is friendly, no pushing or shoving, everyone walks away smiling. I paid $3 for a sizeable bag of cherries, and last weekend I paid a RIDICULOUS $10 for cherries that didn't taste nearly as good.
My morning continued...we lapped the market and took a break in the shade once I had finished. I had bags filled with blueberries, cherries, strawberries, lettuce, eggs, herbs, tomatoes, all sorts of goodies. It's safe to say that I was incredibly content at that point...there are very few things that make me feel as happy as either an incredibly well stocked fridge or having bought all the things to stock my fridge with deliciousness. It's the best feeling to open the door or walk into the kitchen and have all sorts of fresh options to choose from for a snack or to make a meal.
I arrived home ravenous and asked Jeff what he wanted for lunch. To which he replied, with his standard reply, "what d'ya got?" (yes, he was an english major). I realized I didn't actually really have any food for a meal. I bought lots of things to complement a meal (veggies and things), but after thinking for a minute I realized that I could make a pretty darn delicious salad with all the ingredients in my bag. So I offered a salad with fresh berries and goat cheese and pecans. I didn't think he'd bite (literally ... figuratively), but I think he was hungry enough, so he was in.
I went into the kitchen and started making the salad, blueberries, cherries, strawberries, goat cheese and pecans. Easy and simple. I rummaged through my bags to find something else, and I pulled out the basil and chopped that up and threw it in too. But the real breakthrough came when I decided I wanted croutons too, but the only bread I had bought was a cinnamon raisin bread (for french toast tomorrow, yummmmm!). Of course that would work! It's a fruit salad anyway! So I made some cinnamon raisin croutons to top it all off..oh boy, that was good stuff.
I just added olive oil, salt and pepper to dress it with and dug in. Unbelievably fresh and delicious, it's amazing what fresh ingredients can do. The strawberries and cherries were so incredibly juicy and sweet, their juices kind of mixed with the olive oil to make more of a berry vinegrette. oh dear, it was good. The perfect way to top off my morning. This may have to be my new Saturday morning tradition, go to the market, buy a bunch of yummo ingredients and try throwing them all together...hopefully they'll all be as good as this one.
(June) Farmer's Market Salad
I'm just going to list all the stuff I used, obviously you can use as much or as little as you want. Plus the whole idea is to buy whatever's there and make it. But if you happen to have all these ingredients on hand, it's a pretty darn great salad.
Blueberries
Cherries
Strawberries
Goat cheese
Pecans (toasted in a dry pan for a couple of minutes...NOT BURNT!)
Lettuce
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Basil (mint would be good too)
Cinnamon raisin croutons (see below)
For the croutons, the best way to do it (I think) is to use the ends of the bread (especially if you're making french toast with the rest of the loaf, because you won't use the ends). Cut up the ends into bite size pieces, and heat up some butter (or olive oil, but I used butter since it's a sweet bread) in a pan over low heat. Add the bread and let cook for a couple of minutes until one side is golden brown. Toss around in the pan and add more butter if necessary until all sides are golden brown. Add to salad. Dig in and enjoy!!
I love the farmer's market. Especially in the summer. Especially when it's 68 degrees and sunny. Especially when it's overflowing with fruits and veggies and flowers and bread and cheeses and jams and honey and everything else under the sun. It's not only that I'm getting fresh delicious things, but I think I also feel a sense of well-being because I'm helping the local farmers. I'm sure that some of the stands are not small farms, but no matter, I always come away from the market with more bags than I can carry, a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a glowing feeling.
Today was a perfect day for the farmers market (you may have guessed that it was 68 and sunny with a light cool breeze). I finally arrived close to 11, a little late by the farmer's market standard, but there was certainly still a ton of fresh goodness to pick from. I started with cherries, which must be in season because every stand had an overflowing amount of them. I grabbed my little pint and went to pay. The gentleman asked me if I wanted the pint basket and I said no and he thanked me and threw in a couple more handfuls of cherries into my bag. This is why I love the farmers market! Everyone is friendly, no pushing or shoving, everyone walks away smiling. I paid $3 for a sizeable bag of cherries, and last weekend I paid a RIDICULOUS $10 for cherries that didn't taste nearly as good.
My morning continued...we lapped the market and took a break in the shade once I had finished. I had bags filled with blueberries, cherries, strawberries, lettuce, eggs, herbs, tomatoes, all sorts of goodies. It's safe to say that I was incredibly content at that point...there are very few things that make me feel as happy as either an incredibly well stocked fridge or having bought all the things to stock my fridge with deliciousness. It's the best feeling to open the door or walk into the kitchen and have all sorts of fresh options to choose from for a snack or to make a meal.
I arrived home ravenous and asked Jeff what he wanted for lunch. To which he replied, with his standard reply, "what d'ya got?" (yes, he was an english major). I realized I didn't actually really have any food for a meal. I bought lots of things to complement a meal (veggies and things), but after thinking for a minute I realized that I could make a pretty darn delicious salad with all the ingredients in my bag. So I offered a salad with fresh berries and goat cheese and pecans. I didn't think he'd bite (literally ... figuratively), but I think he was hungry enough, so he was in.
I went into the kitchen and started making the salad, blueberries, cherries, strawberries, goat cheese and pecans. Easy and simple. I rummaged through my bags to find something else, and I pulled out the basil and chopped that up and threw it in too. But the real breakthrough came when I decided I wanted croutons too, but the only bread I had bought was a cinnamon raisin bread (for french toast tomorrow, yummmmm!). Of course that would work! It's a fruit salad anyway! So I made some cinnamon raisin croutons to top it all off..oh boy, that was good stuff.
I just added olive oil, salt and pepper to dress it with and dug in. Unbelievably fresh and delicious, it's amazing what fresh ingredients can do. The strawberries and cherries were so incredibly juicy and sweet, their juices kind of mixed with the olive oil to make more of a berry vinegrette. oh dear, it was good. The perfect way to top off my morning. This may have to be my new Saturday morning tradition, go to the market, buy a bunch of yummo ingredients and try throwing them all together...hopefully they'll all be as good as this one.
(June) Farmer's Market Salad
I'm just going to list all the stuff I used, obviously you can use as much or as little as you want. Plus the whole idea is to buy whatever's there and make it. But if you happen to have all these ingredients on hand, it's a pretty darn great salad.
Blueberries
Cherries
Strawberries
Goat cheese
Pecans (toasted in a dry pan for a couple of minutes...NOT BURNT!)
Lettuce
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Basil (mint would be good too)
Cinnamon raisin croutons (see below)
For the croutons, the best way to do it (I think) is to use the ends of the bread (especially if you're making french toast with the rest of the loaf, because you won't use the ends). Cut up the ends into bite size pieces, and heat up some butter (or olive oil, but I used butter since it's a sweet bread) in a pan over low heat. Add the bread and let cook for a couple of minutes until one side is golden brown. Toss around in the pan and add more butter if necessary until all sides are golden brown. Add to salad. Dig in and enjoy!!
Monday, June 04, 2007
rice three (maybe four?) ways
I've never really been able to make rice. Maybe it's silly, but it's true...I always have all sorts of problems when I try to make regular white rice. I've had better luck with brown rice (except the time when I burnt an entire cup of brown rice to the bottom of a pot). When I was in college I would make (the only thing I actually "cooked") the boil-in-a-bag, which worked fine. But now that I'm all grown up and should make adult white rice, I can't seem to get it right.
So last Saturday, while breaking out a serious sweat playing the Wii with some friends, it quickly approached dinner time (well for Jeff it was WAY past dinner time, being 8:30 pm it was well past his usual early bird special). I had found a red curry recipe that I wanted to try, well, in reality, I found a red curry recipe that I wanted to completely change around and replace most of the ingredients with other ingredients, but I did want the red curry to remain the same. This, however, required making rice. I confinded into my friend that I was village idiot when it came to rice making, but she was no help either, apparently I'm not the only one who has this mental block when it comes to rice making.
So I pulled out the Uncle Ben's (the first time I have even ever bought uncle ben's, I usually get the fancier stuff) box, and to make matters worse, they had instructions for making rice for 2, 4, 6 or 12 people. so I immediately looked at the recipe for 6 naturally (we had 4 people), but this recipe only called for 1.5 cups of uncooked rice, which didn't seem to be like a whole lot. My sous chef (not that I'm a better cook than my sous chef, she just happened to be reading the ingredients to me) agreed, and there was no way to double the recipe for 4 because the water/rice ratio varied for each serving size. Clearly, what made the most sense was to make rice for 12.
When the timer alarm went off, I refused to lift the lid because I was sure there was hard uncooked and mushy grains in the pot. When I finally did open the lid, what awaited me were glorious perfectly cooked rice grains. rice for 12 is clearly the answer!!
So after making our way through a lot of the rice for 12 (and we did eat a lot because the red curry was SPICY), I still had oodles and oodles of rice leftover.
what to do with rice leftovers?
well the first option that I came up with, was rice pudding. I actually thought of it when I decided on making rice for 12 (I think I said "well, I can always make rice pudding with the leftovers"). So last night after dinner (we had hamburgers, nothing at all related to rice), I whipped up a batch of rice pudding. It was tasty and delicious, but only used up a small amount of the leftover rice.
So tonight for dinner I was determined to come up with another use for leftover rice. Again, the choice seemed obvious, fried rice. I threw together a pan of fried rice, which was also delicious, and also did not use up all the rice. never again will I make rice for 12! (one of the funny parts of this whole thing is that the amount of rice that I had in leftovers was probably $1 worth...even funnier if you are reading this after reading the per se entry, in which no single bite of that entire meal probably cost less than $1). It had become a challenge at this point (clearly).
So I e-mailed my friend who got me into this predicament in the first place, and she came back with great ideas! Rice salad, rice stuffing, tomato rice soup (coincidentally that was also the soup in the cafeteria today), stuffed peppers, the list goes on and on. I have, however, been lectured over and over again from my mom and grandma that I must not ever make stuffed peppers with cooked rice. They have only ever made it with uncooked rice and it appears to be the proper polish way. I have yet to make any stuffed peppers because I keep forgetting the recipe (mom, can I get that again from you?). So I won't be making the stuffed peppers, but I will be making yet another rice dish tomorrow for dinner.
anywho. rice for 12. now that I have offered up so many options for leftover rice (well, stole a bunch of ideas and then posted them to my blog as though I came up with them), everyone should be making rice for 12. it may just be the only way to make rice come out at all, unless, of course, you use Toshiba's new $800 rice cooker.
So last Saturday, while breaking out a serious sweat playing the Wii with some friends, it quickly approached dinner time (well for Jeff it was WAY past dinner time, being 8:30 pm it was well past his usual early bird special). I had found a red curry recipe that I wanted to try, well, in reality, I found a red curry recipe that I wanted to completely change around and replace most of the ingredients with other ingredients, but I did want the red curry to remain the same. This, however, required making rice. I confinded into my friend that I was village idiot when it came to rice making, but she was no help either, apparently I'm not the only one who has this mental block when it comes to rice making.
So I pulled out the Uncle Ben's (the first time I have even ever bought uncle ben's, I usually get the fancier stuff) box, and to make matters worse, they had instructions for making rice for 2, 4, 6 or 12 people. so I immediately looked at the recipe for 6 naturally (we had 4 people), but this recipe only called for 1.5 cups of uncooked rice, which didn't seem to be like a whole lot. My sous chef (not that I'm a better cook than my sous chef, she just happened to be reading the ingredients to me) agreed, and there was no way to double the recipe for 4 because the water/rice ratio varied for each serving size. Clearly, what made the most sense was to make rice for 12.
When the timer alarm went off, I refused to lift the lid because I was sure there was hard uncooked and mushy grains in the pot. When I finally did open the lid, what awaited me were glorious perfectly cooked rice grains. rice for 12 is clearly the answer!!
So after making our way through a lot of the rice for 12 (and we did eat a lot because the red curry was SPICY), I still had oodles and oodles of rice leftover.
what to do with rice leftovers?
well the first option that I came up with, was rice pudding. I actually thought of it when I decided on making rice for 12 (I think I said "well, I can always make rice pudding with the leftovers"). So last night after dinner (we had hamburgers, nothing at all related to rice), I whipped up a batch of rice pudding. It was tasty and delicious, but only used up a small amount of the leftover rice.
So tonight for dinner I was determined to come up with another use for leftover rice. Again, the choice seemed obvious, fried rice. I threw together a pan of fried rice, which was also delicious, and also did not use up all the rice. never again will I make rice for 12! (one of the funny parts of this whole thing is that the amount of rice that I had in leftovers was probably $1 worth...even funnier if you are reading this after reading the per se entry, in which no single bite of that entire meal probably cost less than $1). It had become a challenge at this point (clearly).
So I e-mailed my friend who got me into this predicament in the first place, and she came back with great ideas! Rice salad, rice stuffing, tomato rice soup (coincidentally that was also the soup in the cafeteria today), stuffed peppers, the list goes on and on. I have, however, been lectured over and over again from my mom and grandma that I must not ever make stuffed peppers with cooked rice. They have only ever made it with uncooked rice and it appears to be the proper polish way. I have yet to make any stuffed peppers because I keep forgetting the recipe (mom, can I get that again from you?). So I won't be making the stuffed peppers, but I will be making yet another rice dish tomorrow for dinner.
anywho. rice for 12. now that I have offered up so many options for leftover rice (well, stole a bunch of ideas and then posted them to my blog as though I came up with them), everyone should be making rice for 12. it may just be the only way to make rice come out at all, unless, of course, you use Toshiba's new $800 rice cooker.
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