Lately frozen yogurt places have been popping up in Durham like Starbuckses in Seattle, with three new ones (Sweet Frog, Moonberries, and Menchie’s) appearing in the past six months and another (Graffiti) on the way. Even TCBY’s gotten into the pump-your-own-and-add-toppings act, remodeling its stores to add self-serve features. It’s not hard to see why fro-yo’s popular: Mixing and matching toppings is fun, the shops constantly rotate flavors so there’s always something new to taste, and customers can tell themselves that yogurt’s a healthier choice than ice cream (even as they load their bowls up with cookie dough bites and cheesecake squares).

Then, there’s boba. The dessert world’s answer to caviar, boba are tiny balls of tapioca filled with fruit-flavored syrup that pop against the palate. They’re compulsively fun to eat, and make a great accompaniment to the more neutral flavors of yogurt.

But, even with the lure of boba, the fro-yo chains offer similar flavors and topping choices, so it remains to be seen how many of these nearly-identical stores the market can support. To see which yogurt joints have the best chances of survival, we decided to review them, starting with Menchie’s and Tutti Fruitti.

Menchie’s

Cost: 47 cents an ounce

Flavor choices: 16

Free samples: Unlimited

Most of Menchie’s flavors are winners, especially the refreshing honeydew and blackberry and the astonishingly authentic-tasting angel food cake. Their original tart flavor is reminiscent of Greek yogurt, and their vanilla is clean and pure. Flavor choices are evenly divided among fruit and cream- or dessert-based. Menchie’s offers a wide array of toppings, including all the usual suspects plus three or four types of boba, mandarin oranges, chocolate rocks, and crumbled versions of every major candy bar. The only downside to Menchie’s is how their poor employees are forced to wish everyone a “smiley day.”

Tutti Frutti

Cost: 44 cents an ounce

Flavor choices: 16

Free samples: Yes, but there weren’t any sampling cups on offer the night we went

Tutti Frutti has some intriguing flavors, including red bean, which John says tastes very similar to the lightly flavored red bean ice cream he had as a child in China. Their banana flavor is appealingly “yogurty” and their original tart has a definite bite, but flavors like Irish cream and birthday cake just come off as a blandly sweet base.  They have fewer toppings than Menchie’s, but do carry some unique choices, like chocolate mints, lemon cake, and waffle cone slices. Tutti Fruitti’s layout also leads customers to file in a line past the pumps and the toppings, unlike Menchie’s, where patrons have more freedom to wander about. (We’ve considered layering fro-yo and toppings to make ‘yogurt parfaits’ at Menchie’s.)

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Oh, sausage. Was there ever a more innuendo-laden food? Its shape is suggestive enough, but try making it at home and you’ll find yourself cracking jokes that Beavis and Butthead would find too obvious.

To start stuffing your sausages, for instance, you need to grease a long, cylindrical funnel with Crisco, using some pretty suggestive hand motions. Then you’ll wish you’d paid better attention in health class, because you’ll need to slip the thin, white, translucent, rubbery casings over the funnel. When you start stuffing the meat through the grinder, it’ll emerge as a bulbous red tip at the end of the funnel, which will then lengthen and expand, and if you’re able to keep a straight face at this point, you’re a lot more stoic than I am.

Try to watch this video and keep your thoughts pure. Just try.

Seriously, sausage-making is a lot of fun, dirty jokes aside, and with a little practice you can make some really tasty links. Our first attempt was a colossal failure. We started too ambitiously, with blood pudding, and turned our kitchen into a pig’s-blood-splattered war zone in the process. The second time around, with the help of the excellent (and innuendo-free) book Home Sausage Making, we managed a more-than-tolerable basic Italian sausage that worked well atop pizza. The third time, we made some rockin’ Chinese sausage using a recipe from Home Sausage Making. Traditionally, Chinese sausage is hung out to dry until it’s dense and shriveled, but this sausage was so tasty fresh that we couldn’t stop eating it.

Some tips we found most useful:

·         You can find cheap sausage casings (and pig’s blood, if you’re daring enough to try blood pudding, or just need an alibi) at Asian markets.

·         Chilling the meat and fat makes it easier to grind.

·         To avoid making a large air pocket, let the meat emerge from the funnel before you tie off the end of the casing.

·         If your sausage turns out too dry, next time, add more fat to the recipe.

·         If you don’t have a mixer, you can stuff casings using just the funnel . . . but you’ll miss out on some of the raunchy fun.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

England’s not a country synonymous with decadence, but the Brits have got one treat so rich it calls to mind a Roman-era banquet: clotted cream. This thickened version of heavy cream boasts a fat content so high that in the U.S. it’s classified as butter. Served atop scones, accompanied by jam, it’s roll-your-eyes-heavenward good. Warm your scones enough and it melts slightly, blending with the scone for lipid-saturated mouthfuls of pastry, sweeter and more unctuous than butter could ever be; dollop it on heavily enough and you’ll experience bites of cream-laden jam that press all the caveperson buttons that respond to sweet and fatty, leavened with fruity tartness.

This wonderful condiment’s available in the U.S., but mainly in ultrapasteurized versions that have been rendered shelf-stable enough to survive the trip across the pond. It’s still good stuff, but not quite the same as the fresh version; even when properly softened, it’s drier and lacks the properly rich mouthfeel.

But if you’re lucky enough to live in the Triangle, you can enjoy the real thing—with a local twist. The Blakemere Company, run by British-born Amanda Fisher out of Chapel Hill, makes clotted cream and a variety of British baked goods. The clotted cream, called Devonshire Delight, runs $7.95 for a 6-oz. jar.

The cream has a slightly different consistency than it does in Britain.: It’s smoother, and forms soft peaks when spread. It’s equally delicious, with a local twist: Since it’s made with milk from grass-fed cows in a farm in Greensboro, the cream’s got a delightful grassy undertone, something I didn’t detect in any of the clotted cream I tried in the U.K. Maybe now the Brits have a reason to be jealous of us at teatime.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

We tried a couple dishes that we hadn't sampled before for our Christmas Eve dinner last weekend. For the main course, we ordered a turducken -- the weirdly wonderful and obscenely opulent creation where you stuff a deboned chicken inside a deboned duck inside a deboned turkey. I had been intrigued by this feast of fowls since seeing John Madden carve one up during a Thanksgiving football game a few years ago. We were inviting my parents over for dinner on Christmas Eve this year, and they had already served us turkey for Thanksgiving, so we needed an appropriately meaty main course that wasn't turkey. We figured we'd kill two ... umm ... three birds with one stone.

We ordered our turducken (or Tur-Duc-Hen, as the label read) from Cajun Grocer. looked like a buffed-up turkey with a very square, broad chest. It was delivered to us frozen, already seasoned with creole seasoning, and stuffed with a load of cornbread dressing. All we had to do was unwrap it, throw it into a baking pan with some water, and put it in the oven for about five hours. It came out of the oven a nice golden brown. One cut across the breast and the bird pretty much busted open and an enticing aroma burst forth.

See the full gallery on Posterous

For dessert, we served a homemade Christmas pudding. You're supposed to let this thing sit for six weeks after first preparing it, so we made our pudding before Thanksgiving. It involved a lot of dried fruits, some flour, a little bit of suet (which we lucked into thanks to one of the butchers at the meat section at a local Harris Teeter), and a healthy helping of brandy. We mixed everything up in a big bowl, covered it, and put it into a pot to steam for about five hours (see the recipe we used).

After that, it sat covered up in a cool place for more than a month, getting periodic infusions of more brandy. With each passing day, the rich aroma of sweet, savory, and alcohol intensified. On Christmas Eve, we resteamed the pudding for an hour, and Courtney made a sweet pudding sauce to accompany it.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Lighting_the_christmas_pudding.avi Watch on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

The video above (skip to the 40-second mark) pretty much describes our visit to the chocolate bar at the Langham Hotel in Boston. We had seen a Travel Channel clip about this all-you-can-eat chocolate buffet and had been itching to try it when we go up to Massachusetts to visit family.

We got our chance a few weeks ago when we went North for Thanksgiving. We made reservations for the chocolate bar for us and Courtney's family a couple months before the trip and were giddy about it in the days leading up to the main event.

The Langham Hotel was as swanky as you would imagine an upscale hotel in Boston to be. Upon entering the hotel, we were greeted by a member of the staff, who guided us to the elevator leading up to the restaurant. One look at the buffet spread had us salivating. There were about eight to ten tables covered with platters of mini chocolate desserts, a big chocolate fountain for dipping, a cotton-candy station, and a crepe station.

Before getting to the food, I should mention that the service at the restaurant was terrific. The waitstaff was attentive and spent quite a bit of time trying to entertain our 1-year-old nephew, Nicholas. Our waiter made him an origami X-wing fighter, and later Santa Claus, who was on hand to provide post-Thanksgiving merriment, asked us if we wanted to him to sneak up behind Nicholas and pose for some surprise pictures. Nicholas turned out to be unimpressed with St. Nick as he was preoccupied at the time with the paper cone from his cotton candy, but still, it was a nice gesture.

Anyway, back to the main event. Wary of stuffing ourselves with too much chocolate too quickly, Courtney and I devised a gameplan: On each trip to the buffet, we would fill our plates with different items and split each item so that we would be able to sample a greater variety of items. Even with that strategy, however, we were only able to each put down about three plates each before being overcome by the avalanche of sweets.

By my estimate, we probably only tried about one-third to one-half of the multitude of desserts. I was doing pretty well until I inadvertently ate one of the gluten-free desserts, which was so dense that it really messed me up. After that, my chocolate-consumption capacity diminished quickly, though I did manage to stave off chocolate overload long enough to make it over to the crepe station.

You can see some of the selections we sampled in the pictures below. My favorite was the mini-tarts with chocolate, banana, and bacon. I thought it was an odd combination at first, but after a couple bites, I could tell that the combination definitely works (it didn't hurt that even the bacon was sweet). The little cups with the mango cream filling were outstanding as well. The crepes were ok, though I think they would have been better if they used fruit compote instead of pieces of fresh fruit, as the crepe fell apart once you started eating it. Still, that was a minor complaint in this wonderful land of chocolate.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Our trip to Baltimore this spring, where we visited the Polish district of Fells Point, left us craving Slavic fare. We loved the smoky, flavorful kielbasa made by the Krakus Deli, so we were happy to discover a similar place right in our own hometown: the Halgo Deli on Alston Road.

We almost drove right past the unassuming deli, which resides in a cute green contemporary building. Once inside, it was déjà vu: the smell of kielbasa in the air, and sacks and boxes of E. Wedel chocolate on the shelves. We hit up the charcuterie section first, where the friendly proprietor shaved off samples of meats for us to try. There was ozorki, or jellied tongue: meaty, with a delightfully unctuous mouthfeel; headcheese, pleasantly garlicy and fatty; kielbasa, smoky and salty; and much more that we didn’t sample. The kielbasa was even better accompanied by sharp Polish mustard that carried a tinge of horseradish. 

We got lunch to go from the deli: two oversized paninis stuffed with generous amounts of ham and bacon, served with Polish cheese, mustard, mayo, lettuce, and tomato. Every ingredient was quality (okay, maybe not the jarred pickle, but everything else). They cost $6.85 apiece but kept us both full until a 9 o’clock supper.

Dinner that night was more Halgo goodies: kielbasa, ozorki, and mushroom pierogies. Halgo’s carries pierogies from Kasia’s, a small Chicago manufacturer, and, let me tell you, they are sensational. The dough is light and the filling restaurant-quality, which, in the case of the mushroom variety, means strongly flavored, umami-rich, savory wild mushrooms. 

Halgo also offers chrusciki—bow-tie-shaped cookies—and sweets baked by the woman who co-owns the shop with her husband. We didn’t try them as we’re still well-stocked with leftover Halloween candy, but they looked delicious.

We’re thrilled to find a local place where we can get our Polish food fix.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I have many happy memories of the hearty traditional English breakfasts I enjoyed back in the U.K. These oversized platters feature a bounty of delights: savory bacon, minerally-rich black pudding, “bangers” (sausages to us Yanks; and why is it that both the words “sausage” and “banger” sound naughty?), baked beans, zesty tomatoes, eggs (which I let John have as I’m not an egg person), and some variation on bread, whether fried or toasted. I’ve been missing those breakfasts, and especially the black pudding, since leaving England So I was psyched to hear that Kildare’s Pub in Chapel Hill offered a similar Irish Breakfast featuring both black and white pudding.

Well, I should have known something was amiss when the waitress didn’t know what an Irish breakfast was (they had a new menu, she claimed). Turns out the kitchen didn’t know either. The dish the menu described included eggs, bacon, bangers, toast, beans, tomatoes, and the aforementioned puddings. The dish I got consisted of eggs, toast, two quarter-sized rounds of black pudding and two of white, and . . . a grilled hot dog. I suppose a hot dog technically can be considered a “sausage,” in the same way that the fermented juice that collects at the bottom of that container of raspberries you left out overnight can be considered “wine,” but really, it was a substitution worthy of Sandra Lee. Now, I know Kildare’s is a small chain of U.S.-based Irish-themed pubs, so I wasn’t expecting an amazing experience, but I hoped for at least a mediocre approximation of what was on the menu. Instead, out of eight items I was supposed to get, three were missing, two were skimpy, and one was counterfeit. 

When John asked the waitress—a very nice young woman--about the missing pieces, she brought back a tomato that had apparently been placed whole under the broiler. Would it have been that much trouble to slice it and sprinkle some token salt or herbs on it? She also offered to bring me macaroni and cheese as a replacement for the beans, but it never arrived.

John’s meal was also disappointing. He ordered corned beef and cabbage and got warmed up cold cuts of corned beef, the kind that usually appears on a Reuben sandwich but not as an entrée by itself. The "parsley cream sauce" that accompanied it? Tartar sauce with some parsley mixed in. 

The friends who were dining with us had a vegetarian boxty (a potato pancake, rolled up like a crepe), which they described as satisfactory, and a burger, which they thought was pretty good. It looks as though Kildare’s can do decent bar food, but when it comes to their Irish offerings—the very thing that’s supposed to set them apart from every other Chapel Hill watering hole—they’re embarrassingly bad. To be on the safe side, treat this “pub” as a bar with cutesy décor.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Happy China, the latest incarnation of Pao Lim/Red Zen/Kimonos, has a new look, a new chef, and a new commitment to all things Sichuan and spicy. If the strings of red chili peppers hanging outside the patio don’t clue you in to the intensity of the dishes, a look at what’s coming out of the kitchen will: dishes drenched in fiery hot oil.

One Tuesday night, we opted to try a sit-down meal at Happy China after a pleasant experience with their take-out menu. We were the only customers in the place during most of the meal (though several people came in for take-out), which wasn’t the best omen, but our waitress, Jamie, was friendly and knowledgeable. When I told her I liked heat and Sichuan peppercorns, she steered me towards the Sichuan Spicy Fish Noodle Soup. What came out of the kitchen caused a double-take: a giant bowl of tender white fish, bean sprouts, wood-ear mushrooms, and noodles bobbing in spicy oil and red with angry chilies. A chilihead’s delight, this soup packed intense heat tempered by the numbing effect of the peppercorns.

We also ordered the crispy intestines. “Intestine” is a scary word, but this dish was more state fair than Bizarre Foods: The perfectly-fried skin of the intestines gave way to a rich, fatty underlayer. Think Peking duck skin without the gaminess of duck. This dish, while tasty, is best consumed as an appetizer by several people. It’s so rich and fatty that two or three slices is plenty.

We also tried the tripe and ox tongue with chili sauce. This cold appetizer boasted the classic Sichuan flavor profile of garlic, sesame, and chili. The meaty taste and flexible texture of the ox tongue contrasted nicely with the less pliant preserved tripe.

On the night we visited, we received complimentary sushi—in this case, a volcano roll, or a roll of whitefish and other ingredients lightly battered, fried, and served with a duo of sauces, one sweet and one spicy. The combination of flavors and the warmth from the frying treatment made this a memorably tasty piece of sushi.

In short, we were wowed by every dish. We hope this little slice of authentic Sichuan cooking outlasts its predecessors, so we can experience more of its menu’s fiery delicacies. 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Say the words “German food” and most people will picture oompah bands, lederhosen, and copious quantities of beer. But how about candlelight, autumn air, and casual-hip decor? That’s what you’ll find at Guglhupf, the celebrated bakery, which, as we found out, also has one heck of a café.

We sat outside on a patio which resembles a funkier version of the generic alien courtyard seen on many an episode on Star Trek: The Next Generation. A fountain trickled, candles glowed, and umbrellas shaded us from the last rays of the evening sun. Towards the end of the meal, a jazz combo started tuning up. Inside the main restaurant, Chinese lanterns and modern chandeliers resembled a school of illuminated jellyfish. None of this was remotely German—save the food.

We began with a wurstplatte: a platter of cold cuts, cheese, eggs, and pickles, served with bread so you could assemble yourself little sandwiches a la Spinal Tap. (The meat comes pre-folded, so you’ll have no worries about its fitting on the bread.) Everything was of high quality—the fresh, well-cured meat, the pickled cauliflower, the tasty bread from the bakery next door, even the sweet butter—and came in great abundance. You could easily make a meal from this platter alone.

John ordered schnitzel, and was pleased to receive a whopping slab of golden-brown, perfectly-fried pork. The meat was moist, while the batter was neither heavy nor greasy. It was particularly good with lemon juice sprinkled on top. 

I tried the maltauschen: large ravioli-type dumplings, served in an herbed cream sauce that had a piquant touch of sweetness from candied walnuts. They came filled with a medley of butternut squash, mushrooms, spinach, and gouda cheese. I had expected the filling to be pureed, but in some ways this was better, as the pliant texture of the vegetables was preserved.

We also brought home a scrumptious-looking cheese strudel with cherry compote that we are still too full to sample. I’ll report back later, but suffice to say Guglhupf serves up some quality German. You won’t even miss the busty frauleins. 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Pao Lim (aka Kimonos, aka Red Zen) has more lives than a cat. Recently, we received a menu from its most recent incarnation, Happy China, and were dismayed to see that it had morphed into what appeared to be your typical takeout joint. The menu, which offered all the usual suspects (kung pao chicken, moo goo gai pan, and my guilty pleasure, General Tso’s) was studded with charming Engrish. Cabbage became “caggage”, celery “seley,” battered shrimp “batlered shrimp.” Snow peas acquired a new plural: “pean.” Mu shu pancakes were served with a mysterious “prow sauce,” perhaps something to be served aboard a boat.  (To be fair, this is the point where I should invite John’s relatives to comment on my absolutely pitiful command of Cantonese.)

But then, amid everything that got lost in translation, we discovered something interesting: Offal. Tripe, ox tongue, intestines, and tendons, to be precise, on a takeout menu. We had to try it.

Maybe the folks at Happy China sensed that we found their menu entertaining, because the beef tripe with wild pepper sauce we ordered packed a fiery punch. It left us breathing fire after every bite. This traditional Sichuan dish was served cold with a piquant blend of chilis, peanuts, sesame, and Sichuan peppercorns. The tripe was cooked perfectly: it had a nice “crunch” without being chewy, and the nutty flavor of the peanuts and sesame provided a pleasant counterpart to the heat.

See the full gallery on Posterous

We also ordered Dan Dan noodles which were billed as being spicy but had no detectable heat. The peanut-infused sauce they were served with was nice, but the noodles themselves were overcooked.

I tried the General Tso’s, which was pretty standard—about on par at what you’d get at the food court. (Which, I guess, is why you go traditional.) The best General Tso’s around, for my money, is at Orient Garden. The batter there is crispier, the heat more pronounced, and the flavors more complex. (Slightly more complex; it is General Tso’s, after all.)

As for the restaurant itself, Happy China appeared pretty much like the old Pao Lim with a slightly different paint scheme. No longer pan-Asian, it now focuses on Chinese food and sushi (they have uni!), with an emphasis on Sichuan cuisine. If our experience with the takeout was anything to go by, it’s like Pao Lim in that it can be hit or miss.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

We had heard good things about Dame's Chicken & Waffles in downtown Durham from a couple of our friends recently, so we went there for dinner last weekend. I didn't know quite what to expect going in, since the restaurant's online menu is in a virtually unreadable font, but I came away very impressed.

There were a couple groups waiting for a table when we went in, but we were seated right away. The place had a rather informal, almost fast-food feel, what with drinks being served in paper cups and maple syrup in little plastic containers. The food, however, was first rate. Basically it's fried chicken served on top of a waffle. The combination of sweet and salty struck me as somewhat strange at first, but then again, I do order bacon with my breakfast pancakes.

I ordered the light brown leghorns, while Courtney got the "What A Classy Hen?" Our food came out very quickly, within about 10 minutes. Courtney's order was a piece of chicken breast on a waffle that came with vanilla and toasted almond crème, while mine was a big pile of food -- four drumsticks on a waffle with chocolate hazelnut spread. The chicken was fried perfectly, among some of the best I've had anywhere. The skin was crispy, with a little separation from the meat, which was tender and juicy. The waffle was pretty good as well. I don't know if the chicken and the waffle really mix, but when each is this good, it doesn't really matter. Each dish also came with a side, for which we picked mac & cheese. Courtney's dish was just the right size for a meal, while mine was enough to serve as dinner and lunch. This is definitely a place we'll be returning to in the future.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

This is a much-belated review of our dinner at the Lantern in Chapel Hill on our anniversary a couple weeks ago. The Lantern is one of our favorite restaurants in the area, and chef Andrea Reusing's James Beard Award is well-deserved. On this occasion, we started things off with an "appetizer" of Korean BBQ chicken. Appetizer is in quotes because you could have easily made a meal out of the dish. It came with three of the most ginormous drumsticks we've ever seen. Seriously, this picture does not do it justice. They looked like they came from some kind of chicken-ostrich mutant hybride:

The drumsticks came with a chile-garlic sauce that tasted a little bit like a hotter version of sweet-and-sour sauce. The outside of the chicken was crunchy, crispy goodness, and the meat inside was moist. However, there were parts around the bone that looked like it could've gone for a little more cooking as it was still pink. I'm not one to freak out over the hint of blood, but in this case, there were small bites here and there that were still kind of chewy and had that not-quite-fully-cooked taste, which was a little bit unsettling since it's poultry rather than meat.

For entrees, Courtney got the fried flounder, while I ordered the tea-smoked chicken. Kudos to the restaurant for serving the flounder in the proper Asian way -- head, tail, and all (which drew a remark from the people sitting next to us when it was brought out). It was nicely fried, and the flavor of the flaky meat was well-complemented by the accompanying sauce.

The tea-smoked chicken is one of my favorite dishes at the Lantern. First, I like the fact that they use dark meat, which I prefer over white since it's juicier and more tender. I also love the smoky flavor, which goes well with the ginger-garlic paste and XO sauce. The small bed of Yangzhou fried rice with bits of barbecue pork and shrimp was also delicious.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Yes, I know my posting on this blog has fallen off in the past several weeks. It's because I've been totally obsessed with house-hunting during that time. Well, I'm happy to report that we're closing in on closing on a house that we fell in love with within minutes of seeing, and of course, like just about anyone in this situation, we've already gotten a huge headstart on planning the remodeling and add-ons we want to do once we move into the house. One of big things at the top of my list is to build an outdoor kitchen. It's been something like this in my head:

Now we aren't big grillers (in fact, we've been making do just fine with the George Foreman electric outdoor grill for the past several years). The main reason I really want an outdoor cooking setup is so I can do a lot of my more grease- and smoke-heavy frying and stir-frying outside, which will help keep the kitchen cleaner, keep the house from smelling like whatever we're cooking, and keep the CPI smoke detector from going off and bringing our brave local firefighters to our doorstep just in time for dinner. In fact, I care more about getting an outdoor stove more than I do about a better grill.

So far in my research, most of the examples of outdoor kitchens I've come across have looked like they're attached to million-dollar homes:

But in the mean time, I'll try to get back on track with this blog. We've actually visited a couple of pretty nice restaurants recently. So stay tuned.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

We've been on a pasta kick ever since we picked up The Pasta Bible from the bargain bin at a bookstore. Saturdays have often become pasta-making days for us as we experiment with different types of pasta and sauces. This past weekend, we tried our hand at making pappardelle with herbs pressed into it. Basically, you just roll out two thin sheets of pasta, sandwich leaves of herbs in between them, and run them through the pasta machine again to seal in the herbs. We chose parsley since it has soft leaves and isn't too overpowering in flavor. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

The recipe called for wheat flour instead of regular flour, and that gave the pappardelle a browner color and coarser texture than the pasta we usually make. The wheat flour took longer to roll into dough as it was more crumbly and looser than regular flour, but I think it did help the pasta stand up better to going through the pasta roller a second time (good thing, because there were a couple little holes in the pasta sheets when we were rolling it out the second time). The resulting sheets of pasta had a rather rustic look to them, and when we cut them into strips, they reminded me of strips of wallpaper with leaf prints.

See the full gallery on Posterous

After cooking, the pasta was firmer than regular-flour pasta, and it was infused with the flavor of the parsley. To accompany the pasta, we made some shrimps and also made a cream-based mushroom sauce. It's the second time we've made that sauce, and just like the last time, it came out rather watery. The taste of the sauce was terrific, as it's wont to be when you put a pound of various varieties of mushrooms and some bacon and heavy cream into it. However, we really think this sauce would be much better if it was thicker, so I'm going to tweak it a bit next time to see if I can get it to thicken up. Part of the problem is that both times we've made this sauce, we've underestimated the amount of time it takes for the heavy cream to reduce sufficiently. Also, we think this might not be the best type of sauce for this particular type of pasta. Maybe we'll go back to our tried-and-true tomato-based sauce next time, since that does a better job of sticking to the pasta.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

After my dad spent two days over Memorial Day weekend helping us with a yard project, we showed our appreciation by taking him and mom out to dinner at Watts Grocery in Durham on Sunday night. It was my parents' first time there, while Courtney and I have been there once before for brunch but not dinner. I dare say that the dinner made a great first impression on my parents.

We started things off with rabbit liver pâté for appetizer. As is usually the case when we order liver pâté, I wish we had gotten more bread to smear the pâté on. We got a generous slab of pâté, which had that delicious liver taste. The accompanying relish and spicy mustard provided a sharp contrast, but I thought they were actually too strong and overpowered the flavor of the pâté, so I just skipped them altogether.

For entrees, we ordered the braised and crisped rabbit, the sauteed shrimps, and the spring pasta, which on this night was papperdelle with lots of vegetables and duck confit. All three were excellent. The leg of braised rabbit had a terrific flavor and a nice bit of cripiness, and the meat was tender and moist.

The pasta came with a cheese sauce (we were guessing maybe Parmesan) that was sweet and creamy and was topped with lumps of melting goat cheese. The vegetables --zucchini, squash, mushrooms, and tomatoes -- were fresh and crip, and the shreds of duck added a nice flavor.

Courtney's shrimp dish was probably my favorite. The shrimps were large and cooked perfectly. The bed of hominy was firm and soaked up the great flavor of the sauce, which was the best part of the dish. The sauce is very savory and thick with umami, perhaps from the oyster mushrooms in the dish, and releases a nice little bit of heat at the end. It was so good that after we had eaten all the food, Courtney and I were spooning the sauce, savoring the flavor, and trying to figure out the ingredients.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Before going to see SPAMALOT at the Durham Performance Arts Center on Tuesday night, we went to Fishmongers near Brightleaf Square in Durham for dinner. It had been one of the stops on the food tour we did recently, and I wanted to go back and try it again. I had enjoyed the little samplers we received during the food tour. However, our second impression was, on the whole, rather disappointing.

Courtney and I each started with a bowl of New England clam chowder. I admit I get spoiled when it comes to clam chowder because Courtney makes a very good version at home frequently, but even to a non-snooty palate, the chowder we got at Fishermongers was very much under-seasoned. In fact, we both had to sprinkle a generous amount of salt and pepper into our bowls to add some flavor. There weren't a whole lot of clams in the chowder, and the potatoes were not peeled (the first time I had seen that in New England clam chowder).

My entree, the barbecue shrimp, was the polar opposite of the chowder. The plate of shell-on shrimps came swimming in a pool of angry-looking, sweat-inducing spicy barbecue sauce. I had tried a couple of these shrimps on the food tour and liked them, so I was expecting to enjoy this dish. And I did, for the first few shrimps. After that, my mouth and lips were on fire and all I could really taste from there on were burning and chili powder. I don't mind a bit of a kick, but this was getting to the point where you are just tasting the spices and not the shrimp. It's as if all the seasoning that had been missing in the chowder went into this dish instead, and then some. On the plus side, you get a lot of food, but on the minus side, all of it tasted like chili powder, and you end up chugging down one glass of water after another to try to soothe your mouth.

See the full gallery on Posterous

There was one dish we had that was about just right -- the sautéed mussels -- and it was a pretty good deal, too. For less than $10, we got a pound of mussels that were cooked in butter, garlic, and wine. The flavor was terrific and the mussels were plump and sported a nice orange color.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Here's a review of the places we dined at during our recent trip to Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Baltimore

Ze Mean Bean Cafe

This was the first place we ate at on our trip, and it turned out to be my favorite, with a terrific combination of atmosphere and good food. We actually ended up going to this place twice, once for dinner and once for brunch. From the name, you might think it's a coffeeshop, but it actually is a Polish restaurant. This was one of a number of Polish establishments in Fell's Point, the neighborhood where we stayed. With Courtney having partial Polish blood in her, she was looking forward to sampling some authentic Polish food after she discovered that we were staying in a once Poles-heavy area. As luck would have it, Ze Mean Bean was only a block away. The restaurant is a small, cozy place with tables split over two floors, a bar, and a little corner stage where poets and musicians perform on certain nights of the week (unfortunately none were performing when we visited).

See the full gallery on Posterous

On the night we had dinner at Ze Mean Bean, we kicked things off with a bowl of borscht -- soup with beets and other vegetables. This was the first time either of us had borscht, and it was surprisingly good. The beets and other vegetables were sweet, and there was a nice bit of spiciness from the pieces of red pepper. There were also a few pieces of mushrooms, whose savoriness contrasted nicely with the overall sweetness of the soup. So you're drinking this sweet and spicy soup, but every so often, you got a wonderful burst of umami from the mushrooms.

For the entrees, I ordered a plate of galumpkis, while Courtney went for the Slavic sampler plate, which included galumpkis, kielbasa, potato pancake and three types of pierogis. Courtney has made galumpkis for me plent of times before, and the galumpkis at Ze Mean Bean were dryer and their fillings were more meatball-like than what Courtney usually makes. The meat-rice ratio was much more slanted in favor of meat, and the filling was denser. I think they also cook the galumpkis in the oven longer than Courtney usually does, as the cabbage leaves were dryer. Ze Mean Bean's version was pretty solid, though I think prefer Courtney's.

The potato pancake was also good, though a bit oily. We liked the pierogis as well. We had three types of fillings: cabbage, potatoe, and cheese. I think the cheese pierogi was our favorite, as it had a very nice sweetness to it.

For me, the highlight of the meal was the kielbasa, which boasted a strong smoky flavor that far surpasses what you get from the kielbasa at your regular grocery store. We asked the waitress where they get their kielbasa from, and it turns out they get it from the Polish deli right next door. The kielbasa was so good that we ended up visiting that deli the next day and picked up some kielbasa to take home.

Fire vodka (highly recommended)

We enjoyed our dinner so much that two days later, when our original brunch plan fell through, we had no hesitation about going back to Ze Mean Bean to try its brunch. I went for the crab omelet, which was very, very good. I was expecting mostly egg with a little bit of crab meat mixed in. Instead, I got an omelet that had a very thick layer of lump crab meat tucked between the layers of egg. Every bite was filled with more crab than egg. Courtney ordered the pistachio cranberry pancakes, and the pistachio added a nice twist to the sweet taste you usually associate with pancakes. It tasted almost more like some kind of baked pastry than pancakes.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Obrycki's

This was one of the places we definitely wanted to try in Baltimore, having seen it featured on the Travel Channel. This is billed as the go-to place for good crabs in Baltimore. However, what drew us here wasn't the steamed crabs, but rather the crab cakes. We watched a segment on Man vs. Food that showed how they make the crab cakes at Obrycki's, and it was basically big chunks of crab held together with small chunks of crab.

The crab cakes did not disappoint. They were very pricey, at about $30 for two cakes, but we definitely got our money's worth as the cakes were pretty much all crab and very little else. The flavor was pretty good, too. It was not as spicy as crab cakes I've had at some other places, thus allowing the taste of crab to shine through. It also came with some nice large steamed spears of asparagus.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Beyond the crab cakes, however, the rest of our food at Obrycki's was nothing special. We ordered a cup of savory crab soup, but it just tasted like your basic tomato-based vegetable soup with some crab meat thrown in, and you really couldn't taste the crab because the tomato flavor overwhelmed it. We also ordered a fried softshell crab, which was ok, but I've definitely had better, including at Thai Cafe in Durham. The body of the softshell crab had a very strong, crabby flavor (a good thing), but the legs were kind of squishy and liquidy (not sure if it was oil or crab juice). The bread and the sides (baked potatoe and French fries) were just so-so as well.

See the full gallery on Posterous

As for the steamed blue crabs, you better be prepared to pay a premium for them. Obrycki's was charging $49 per dozen for the smallest size, $65 for the medium size, and $75 for the largest size. That's a pretty hefty price considering 1) you can get live crabs for about $4 a pound at many seafood markets, which translates to no more than $15 to $20 for a dozen, and 2) it's not like steaming blue crabs takes a whole lot of work. You just throw the crabs into a pot and add your seasoning. Taking that into account, we decided to skip the crabs. It just didn't seem worth it.

Brick Oven Pizza

We didn't set out on our second night in Baltimore with the intention to eat here. We had actually planned to go to Bertha's Mussels, having succumbed to the giant superliminal sign on the side of the restaurant that said, "Eat Bertha's Mussels". After more than an hour of waiting and seeing no end in sight, however, we bailed on plan A and walked out into a chilly, drizzly night at around 9 p.m. looking for plan B when we saw Brick Oven Pizza next door. Maybe it was partly the hunger and the cold, but the pizzas here looked and tasted very good. The crust was flavorful and soft, and the cheese was hot and melty, so much so that a good chunk of it was sliding off of our pizza slices. We also spotted a number of police officers among the diners, and you figure cops would know where to get a good slice.

Pitango Gelato

After dinner on our first night in Baltimore, we went for a walk around Fell's Point in search of dessert. Pitango Gelato, located on the wharf, lured us in with its offering of unique flavors. We tried four flavors: black tea, crema, Sicilian almond, and coconut. The almond and coconut flavors were refreshing and light, but my favorite was the black tea, which, true to its name, tasted just like tea and carried a nice fragrance that lingered on your palate long after the last bite. We liked our gelato so much that a couple nights later, when we were in Washington, we visited a Pitango Gelato location there and tried three more flavors -- chocolate hazelnut, cardamom, and quince -- and loved all three flavors. The chocolate hazelnut was sweet and warm and infused with that intense hazelnut taste. The cardamom had the spicy tingling flavor that you get from ginger, while the quince tasted sweet, clean, and refreshing, sort of like a cross between raspberries and pears.

La Tasca

This is a regional franchise of five tapas restaurants, and we dined at the Washington Chinatown location on our previous trip to the nation's capital four years ago. That meal was terrific (and started us on a still-ongoing mussels kick), so we went back there again on this trip. The place is huge, with a plethora of tables spread over two floors, dimmed lighting, and flowery tiles on the walls that resembled, of all things, the drawing of the female reproductive system straight from your middle school health class textbook.

The dish we enjoyed most on our previous visit to La Tasca was the mussels, and we were happy to find that the dish had not diminished in the last four years. The mussels were cooked with a delicious tomato-based sauce with onions and chili. They were so tasty that we ordered a second helping, and the sauce was so good that when we ordered the second helping, we ordered some garlic bread just so we'd have something with which to soak up the sauce.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Among the other dishes, our favorite was the duck leg confit, which was served with caramelized figs and chick-pea puree. By itself, the chick-pea puree was a bit dry. However, when combined with the duck and the figs, which was probably what you're supposed to do, the three merged into a delicious symphony of flavors and textures. You had the cripy, gamey duck, the soft chick-pea puree, and then the sweet caramelized figs, which acted like a sauce on the duck and chick peas.

Our dinner also included an order of miniature paella, which was pretty good despite the presence of peas, something you don't usually associate with paella. We also tried the lamb skewers, which was a bit disappointing as the lamb was rather dry. The accompanying hazelnut sauce, however, was amazing. It was very nutty in flavor and had a texture that made you feel like you were eating hazelnut puree. It was so good that we were spooning the leftover sauce after we had polished off the lamb

See the full gallery on Posterous

Crepes on the Walk

We were strolling along 7th Street near Chinatown after dinner on our first night in Washington when we came across this little crepes stall. It's located in an alley next to Clyde's leading to what appeared to be a mall or big department store and tucked in between a pretzel stall and a smoothie stall. This was quite possibly the best crepe we've ever had. Made on order while we watched, the paper-thin crepe had a very nice cripiness along the edges, a generous spread of Nutella (which would be Courtney's crack if not for coffee), and fresh bananas. It was so good that a day later, an hour before we left D.C., we made a point to circle back to that stall to pick up a couple more crepes -- the ol' reliable Nutella and banana variety and a strawberry lemon crepe that was sweet and refreshing.

Tony Cheng's Restaurant

One of the must-dos on our DC dining itinerary was dimsum, and the place I've been going to for dimsum on visits to D.C. since my teenage years has been Tony Cheng's Restaurant. It's located in a two-story building near the entrance to Chinatown. The first floor is a Mongolian restaurant, while the second floor is a Chinese seafood restaurant/dimsum place. We had planned to go there for breakfast, since dimsum is traditionally a breakfast cuisine in Guangzhou, but the restaurant doesn't open until 11 a.m., so we had to go for lunch instead.

Getting there a little after 11 a.m. paid off as we beat most of the lunch rush and the dimsum carts were all full. Within 10 minutes of sitting down, our table was covered with steamers containing classic dimsum dishes: phoenix talons, roast pork buns, sticky rice with chicken, hargaw, siumai ... All the dishes were very good, and the plump and tasty phoenix talons were my favorite.

Full Kee

This is another Chinatown joint that I have patronized since my childhood days, when my parents would make day trips to D.C. to see a tourist sight or two, eat dimsum at Chinatown for lunch, load up on Chinese ingredients like dried shiitake mushrooms in one of the Chinatown shops (Chinese grocery stores were still few and far in between in the Triangle at that time), and end the trip with a visit to Full Kee for a couple bowls of their wonton noodles before hitting the road for the 4.5-hour drive home. I hadn't been to Full Kee in years, though, and I knew I wanted to rectify that oversight on this trip.

The restaurant doesn't look very impressive from the outside or inside. It's just a small storefront a couple blocks down from the Chinatown entrance. However, when you walk in you immediately smell the delicious wonton soup and the aroma of freshly made noodles coming from the chef station in the front of the restaurant. After you place your order, the chef throws some noodles into a big pot of water and then starts making your wontons/dumplings from scratch before putting them into another giant pot of water. When both noodles and dumplings are cooked, they're combined in a big bowl and topped with a big ladle of delicious broth that makes you realize the stuff you get in your local Chinese buffet doesn't deserve to be called wonton soup. The noodles have a nice firm texture, a bit like that of al dente pasta, and the dumplings are big and stuffed with fresh shrimps. The price for a bowl of noodles, four or five dumplings, and soup? $6.25. That's as good a culinary bargain as you can find in D.C.

Wanted to try but didn't get to

Bertha's Mussels

As mentioned above, this was going to be our dinner destination one night in Baltimore, but the long wait time foiled those plans. We didn't make a resevation since the idea to eat here came on a whim that day after seeing the "Eat Bertha's Mussels" sign, and we were told there would be a 45-minute wait. More than an hour later, however, we and a few of the people ahead of us were still standing around and waiting to be seated. The hostess told us that even though there were a couple tables open, she couldn't seat us because the kitchen was backed up big time from a big party upstairs and an almost full dining room, so there would be a long wait for food after someone was seated. At that point, we decided to give up on this place. It's too bad, because it smelled really good walking into the dining room, and the bowls of mussels the waitresses were carrying around made us salivate.

Blue Moon Cafe

We had read some good things about this place in Fell's Point in Baltimore and wanted to try it for breakfast/brunch. However, so did a bunch of other people, and that meant long waits. This wasn't so much a case of a lot of people showing up as it was a case of the restaurant being tiny. Blue Moon Cafe had all of eight tables, and there were flocks of people standing outside waiting for their turn -- something we witnessed every time we walked/drove past Blue Moon Cafe during business hours.

Ben's Chili Bowl

One of my biggest regrets for this trip was not making it to this historic foodie destination in Washington despite the fact that we were staying only a few blocks away from it. We simply didn't have enough meals during our two-and-a-half days in D.C. (and a chili dog just seemed a bit much for breakfast). At least I already have something on the itinerary for our next trip to D.C.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Today being Courtney's birthday, we went to Iris, the restaurant at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, for brunch. We had been to the museum's restaurant once before for brunch and enjoyed it, though that was before the museum moved to a new building last year. Just like the new building, the new restaurant's space is open, modern, and filled with natural light. The restaurant also matches the new museum's clean, white, minimalist design emphasizing smooth shapes, from the swivel bucket seats all the way down to the salt and pepper shakers. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

See the full gallery on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

“Call me when you need bail,” John said as I drove off to gather honeysuckle blossoms from an undisclosed Durham location. Okay, so the signs there said I was not to pick or remove any plants. But honeysuckles grow in great profusion, and no one would miss a few blossoms that were going to wither and die in a few days anyway. To heck with the signs, I figured.

Ever since I heard about the honeysuckle sorbet served at Crook’s Corner, I wanted to try it. I had happy memories of tasting honeysuckle nectar as a kid—those tiny droplets at the base of the trumpet-shaped flowers that faded all too quickly on the tongue. I filled my pockets with the flowers, only to find them wilted, crushed, and all but nectarless when I tasted them later. Sorbet, I figured as an adult, would be a way to preserve that evanescent flavor. 

When the ice cream attachment for my Kitchen Aid arrived in the mail last year, honeysuckle season was already over, so this year I was quick to go out and harvest. I got some strange looks from passerby as I filled a quart container with flowers, but, contrary to John’s predictions, I wasn’t arrested, or even so much as scolded.

The next day, the flowers yielded a stunning sorbet—sweet but not sugary, with a distinct floral taste that lingered on the palate. What’s more, it had terroir. It tasted like a May evening in Durham, riding through a bike path lined with honeysuckles in full bloom. I may be carried away in my enthusiasm for this dessert, but I am convinced that sorbet made from flowers foraged from somewhere else would taste subtly different.

John has since become completely obsessed with the sorbet, and barely restrained himself from sneaking another taste right before we went to bed last night. He’s now talking about growing the plants so I won’t be in danger of a citation (or a scolding) when I make this next time. 

The sorbet’s easy to make if you’ve got an ice cream machine or attachment. Try some yourself before these evanescent flowers are gone.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »