Well that is true, but completely undersells the experience. Since my first visit, I’ve been back twice and it’s a welcome comfort each time. When it’s chilly outside, ramen is warm and filling and with flu season upon us, there’s nothing like a good soup to make you feel better.

Especially if you’re like me and start with Gyoza (or Jiaozi, Dumplings, Potstickers, whatever you like to call them). Dumplings are one of my food addictions, no matter how much I plan to eat, I have to start with them if they’re on the menu. Steamed if I’m trying to be healthy, fried if I just don’t care. You get a nice serving of five which is perfect for sharing… just not with me!

I went for the Gojiramen: traditional shoyu (soy sauce/chicken stock broth) ramen with chashu (roasted Berkshire pork), menma (marinated bamboo shoots), scallions, nori (seaweed), and sprouts. I’ve had the Shoki bowl before as well and both were delicious and had me tipping the bowl after finishing to slurp up a bit more broth. Speaking of slurping, if you’ve ever seen the Spaghetti scene from Tampopo, you’ll know what I’m talking about, but slurping is definitely not frowned upon here.

A few more pictures are up on flickr, but I didn’t really “chow down” on this visit. A gentleman seated near me made the mistake of ordering too much and had to have his appetizers boxed up to take with him. There are other delights on their menu that I look forward to trying on future visits, but this little out of the way place is enough to get me down to Adams Morgan on a more regular basis and that’s saying something. I certainly won’t look at ramen the same way anymore and no microwaved cup with a seasoning packet will ever cut it again.

From now on, I shall always hear Patrick Stewart in my head when preparing a roast chicken.

I don’t normally buy parody or themed books, but this might be perfect to have on the coffee table or prominently displayed on the cookbook shelf.

My love for Bourbon Steak DC is no secret, but we typically go for lunch or dinner, only spending a few minutes at the bar while waiting for our entire party to arrive. Mostly that was tactical since as some of our bunch are lightweights, indulging in a smattering of cocktails before our dinner would have them passing out before the entree arrived. So when a friend suggested heading over there for happy hour to celebrate her late mother’s birthday, it was a great reason to have some cocktails and laughs in the lounge.

Pain d’epices, butterscotch caramel, and pepitas. Can we interest you in our Macallan 18 Butterscotch Pot De Crème? ow.ly/dbEbd

— BOURBON STEAK D.C. (@BOURBONSTEAKDC) August 23, 2012

I was well aware of the tempting libations from previous visits and the restaurant makes great use of social media, tempting their followers from time to time with food and drink suggestions…

I started things off with an Achilles Heel, hanger one frasier river raspberry, metaxa ouzo, fresh lime and ginger served in a salted glass with cucumber garnish. I’m normally pretty wary of ouzo, but I knew I was in good hands with Duane Sylvestre who made sure I got the most out of the drink by encouraging me to tuck into the garnish after having a sip. Who knew that a little salted cucumber could enhance one’s cocktail experience so well?

The boy prefers his drinks on the sweeter side and cooled off with a classic Planter’s Punch to start while my friend opened with her usual, a Sazerac. It was a good thing we got there fairly early as we were able to chat with the bar staff and I could get out my cocktail nerdity before the lounge got too loud and crowded.

For my second round, I went with the Wooden Chair Rickey, Bourbon Steak’s entry into 2012′s Rickey Month competition.

It had a nice blend of flavors which I confess I can’t recall exactly at the moment–perhaps too much celebrating–garnished with pickled cherries. It satisfied the requirements of the classic Rickey, it was cold, tart and fizzy with more than a hint of sweetness, or as the drink is commonly called, “air conditioning in a glass”. I always try to order a few in the warm months and I’m glad I didn’t pass this one up.

Closing out the night with a delicious burger and a Planter’s Punch of my own, it was a really fun evening with a bit of nerdy celebrity spotting, many laughs and sharing memories and stories. Something I feel you can’t always do with your friends online.

As I’ve said before, unfortunately Bourbon Steak isn’t for the everyday meal or cocktail hour, but as a special treat to yourself every now and then–I think we’re up to once or twice a season, now–you will enjoy a great afternoon or evening with impeccable service, delicious food and as I can now confirm, amazing cocktails.

This week in DC, the Climate Reality Project is partnering with Pleasant Pops to provide a little relief from the heat by offering free frozen treats to help raise awareness about climate change.

Tweet #ImTooHot

The Pleasant Pops trucks will be touring the city at the locations listed below. To receive a free frozen treat, Washingtonians can show us their tweet or Facebook post using the hashtag #ImTooHot telling us how the extreme weather has been impacting their daily lives.

We will also have on-ground spokespeople available at both the truck and the site of a free-standing #ImTooHot interactive mural and the below listed locations.

• Wednesday August 15th: 12 – 2PM West End (24th and M NW); 3-7PM at the Foggy Bottom/George Washington University Farmers Market
• Thursday August 16th: 11AM-2:30PM via push cart and truck at the White House Farmers Market; 3-4PM at Farragut Square
• Friday August 17th: 11AM-3PM at Franklin Park (13th and K NW)
• Saturday August 18th: 9AM to 1PM at the Mt. Pleasant Farmers Market

Fans of ER will be happy to know that celebrity and committed social activist Gloria Reuben will be joining the truck on Thursday and Friday. Follow the Climate Reality Project and keep up with the conversation on twitter.

It’ll be just like running after the ice cream truck back in the day, except now the truck comes to you and you can pay with a tweet. Enjoy and keep cool!

“When you take a lot of the fat out, essentially cheese will turn into an eraser” Dr Gregory Miller, Dairy Research In… say.ly/qHv3VTW

— Ellie Krieger (@Ellie_Krieger) August 8, 2012

I usually try to avoid recipes that call for reduced-fat cheese unless it’s for sprinkling, like over chili. We’re still concerned about our fat/calorie intake, but some sacrifices simply aren’t worth it.

About the only thing I keep having trouble with is getting that nice cross-hatch grill mark pattern on the food. For some reason, I never turn at quite the right angle, or flip in the right direction and often just settle for the single diagonal stripe approach rather than mess up the look. Sure, the food still tastes great, but sometimes you do want to show off just a little. And last weekend while catching an episode of Essential Pépin devoted to beef, Jacques briefly went through the steps of getting the perfect pattern… in a grill pan!

I tried this last night with some chicken and lamb and wasn’t completely successful. I think I this way‘d when I should have this way‘d, or something, but I’ll keep working at it. Grillmasters out there: leave a comment and let me know your best technique for grill marks?

The entire episode and some recipes are online at KQED.org and it’s worth watching even if you’re just a fan of cooked meat. So to modify his usual sign off, “Happy Grilling!“

In conjunction with our attempts to eat lighter, I’ve been reading Rocco DiSpirito‘s "Now Eat This!" and many of the recipes are pretty simple and fast though the creative ingredients substitutions for some recipes may give one pause. Last night I made his version of light–make that super-light–chili con carne with surprisingly delicious results!

The secret, though it’s hardly a secret, is that it doesn’t use any oil and hardly any fat. Ground turkey breast meat is 99% lean and the recipe didn’t call for any butter or oil, just vegetables, their juice, turkey and beans. We were wary, I caught my spouse readying himself for disappointment, but it turned out to be a flavorful chili with good texture and plenty of heat. See nutritional details after the recipe, but I’ll confirm that when he titled it Super-Light, that was referring to calories, not taste.

Super-Light Mexican Chili con Carne with Beans

Recipe from Rocco DiSpirito‘s "Now Eat This!"

Ingredients

• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 medium yellow onion, cut into fine dice
• 1 green bell pepper, seeded and cut into fine dice
• One 35-ounce can whole plum tomatoes, roughly chopped, juices reserved ^(a)
• 3 tablespoons chili powder ^(b)
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 12 ounces ground turkey breast ^(c)
• One 14-ounce can black beans, drained ^(d)
• Shredded 75% reduced-fat cheddar cheese, such as Cabot
• Reduced-fat sour cream ^(e)

Substitutions/Notes

I usually place this section last, but when shopping for the specified ingredients, I noticed that the sizes in my local grocery store didn’t quite match up, something that can happen a lot when cooking from a book, especially a healthy recipe cookbook. My substitutions and other notes follow.

1. I was unable to find a 35-ounce can of whole plum tomatoes in my local shop, so I compromised with a 28-ounce can + an 8-ounce can of tomato sauce.
2. As mentioned before, I’m a heat wuss, so I used 2 tablespoons Chipotle chili powder with 1 tablespoon chili powder.
3. At the local shop, ground turkey breast only came in a 20-ounce package, so I used the entire thing.
4. Again, this size couldn’t be found, so I used a 15.5-ounce can of black beans.
5. This is my own addition. It helps temper the significant heat produced by all the chili powder & cumin!

Instructions

1. In a Dutch oven, combine the garlic, onion, bell pepper, tomatoes and their juices, chili powder, and cumin. Bring to a boil over high heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 8 minutes.
2. Raise the heat to high and add the ground turkey, stirring to break it up. Add the black beans and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover, and bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until turkey is cooked through, about 8 minutes.
3. Serve the chili in bowls, with the cheese sprinkled on top.

The recipe is very simple with only a few steps, so I had time to do a little bit extra. I “browned” the ground turkey–using non-stick cooking spray and a few spoonfuls of the simmering chili liquid–in another pot first before adding it to the chili. And I let the chili cook for longer than 8 minutes each step since this wasn’t a classic long-cooking recipe, I wanted as much flavor to develop as possible.

DiSpirito’s original recipe serves 4 at 287 calories per serving. My modified recipe (with more ground turkey and beans) serves 6 at 245 calories per 11.5-ounce serving. (Per Lose It! — Total Fat: 2.2g, Cholesterol: 60.4mg, Sodium: 544.5mg, Carbs: 22g, Fiber: 6.7g, Sugars: 3.1g, Protein: 29g) Sprinkle ¹⁄₈-cup reduced fat cheddar and top with 2 teaspoons light sour cream to add another 55 calories bringing each bowl to a nice even 300 calories per serving.

Having a kitchen scale is great for portion control/serving size. Admittedly to figure out the above, I had to find a large enough bowl/pot, tare its weight on the scale, then pour the chili from the Dutch oven into it, but after a little weighing and a little math, it wasn’t too bad. And even though this chili had me sweating from the heat, I packed up a serving to bring into the office for lunch today–with cheese and sour cream, of course.

I look forward to flipping through more recipes in this book and slowly making the switch–or in some cases, doubling up–from paper to eBooks when it comes to my cookbook library at home.

I also had to take a bit of a break from… calories. The boy and I have been doing our best to watch what we eat, get a bit more exercise and try to shed a few pounds. Unfortunately, this meant that I would have to cut back on something I love: booze. No more pitchers of martinis for me! Instead enjoying one or two drinks every few nights is a more conducive habit to good fitness goals. I wouldn’t cut drinking out completely, but applying a bit of moderation didn’t hurt.

Still, it had been a while since I’d come up with anything new on the bar and I decided that the result of my next set of cocktail experiments should reflect my “mourning period” and be colored an appropriate shade of black. Thing is, it is amazingly difficult to find “black” cocktails using Google without coming up with a lot of unhelpful results. I found a lot that have the word black in the name, but not too many that are the color black after being mixed. Or worse, recipes that didn’t “cheat” by using either Blavod Black Vodka which I wasn’t in the mood to hunt down, or Black Raspberry or Cherry liqueurs, neither of which I’m a fan of.

The Black Pearl

The flavors of peach, pear, orange and pomegranate come together for a cocktail on the sweet side with a gothic black tint.

Ingredients

• 1 ¹⁄₂ oz vodka, pear infused
• ³⁄₄ oz 100% pomegranate juice
• ¹⁄₂ oz peachtree schapps
• ¹⁄₂ oz blue curacao

Instructions

1. Shake ingredients with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and serve.

This recipe produced the visual result that I was looking for with that “just a hint of sweet” undercurrent that I enjoy. I have no problem with pink drinks, but when it comes to my bar, the “girlier” the cocktail, the faster you’re hitting the floor… I tried adding spirits of other colors, but the flavors didn’t help the drink at all and while it isn’t “true” black, with the right lighting, it does the trick. The fun of it is that the longer the drink sits–as if you’d let this cocktail settle?!–the purple of the pomegranate separates from the blue curacao to create a BIV (as in ROY G.) spectrum of color flowing from the top to the bottom.

With my usual boldness and panache, I’ll go out on a limb and call The Black Pearl–named by a good friend–my signature cocktail for the season. I’m not likely to be creating too many more drinks this summer as that might be too much temptation to break the drinking limits, it’s a safe call.

This sweet potato cheesecake recipe was a result of the combination of my love for cheesecake and the rapidly dwindling supplies of frozen homemade sweet potato pies that my aunt would send us each year. I’ve made sweet potato pies before, but somehow they don’t seem to impress and/or entice as much as cheesecake. I admit it, sometimes I make a dessert to bring to an event that will impress. I’m only human!

Sweet Potato Cheesecake

Crust*:

• 14-ounce bag of gingersnap cookies, finely ground
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted

Cheesecake:

• 14-ounce can of canned yams in light syrup*, mashed with fork until it makes ³⁄₄ cup
• 24 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• 8 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons apple cider
• ³⁄₄ teaspoon ginger
• ³⁄₄ teaspoon cinnamon
• ³⁄₄ teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 tablespoons cream
• 4 large eggs, at room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter a 10 1 ¹⁄₂-inch springform pan. (Optional) Line the bottom and sides of the pan with buttered parchment paper to make for an easier removal.
2. If you’re a kitchen gadget person–like me–grind the cookies up in a food processor, if not, place the cookies in a large zip-top bag and crush them to your desired fineness with a rolling pin or empty wine bottle.
3. In a mixing bowl, combine the gingersnap crumbs and melted butter and stir well. Pour the crumbs into the bottom of the springform pan, pressing out from the center and up against the sides to roughly an inch. A thicker base crust will mean less height on the sides. Use any round smooth-bottomed glass, measuring cup or kitchen tool to tamp down the crumbs, forming an even crust.
4. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, the edges of the crust should pick up a bit of color but the crust will not be set. Remove from oven to cool slightly while completing the cake batter.
5. In a mixer with paddle attachment, combine cream cheese, butter and sugar. Mix until smooth and combined. You may need to pause to scrape down the bowl once or twice.
6. Add the reserved sweet potato puree and mix to blend. Add apple cider, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cream and mix well. Add eggs, two at a time, scraping down the bowl between additions and mix just until incorporated and the batter is smooth. (With most mixers, paddle attachments are pretty good at collecting "potato strings" for easy removal.)
7. Pour batter into the prepared crust and bake at 350° F for an hour. It should be just set around the edges, and slightly jiggly in the center.
   • Employ your own "cheesecake baking/cooling method" here. I prefer an hour at constant temperature, then turning the heat off and leaving it in the oven another hour or two until it’s cooled down to help avoid cracking.
   • Some cheesecake recipes call for a slow reducing of temperature over time. Ex: 20 minutes at 350, then 20 at 325, 20 at 300, etc. That’s too much bother for me, but your miles may vary and you know your oven better than I.
8. Once the cake has cooled, refrigerate it for a few hours or overnight before serving.

* Notes: My default crust for cheesecakes is now ginger snaps as opposed to graham crackers. It generally adds something extra and I’ve had friends that wanted to nibble on the crust more than the cake. I think the cookie better complements this cheesecake, but feel free to substitute your preferred crust.

I drain the yams and reserve the syrup, adding it back in as needed to make a smooth puree. It’s ok to mash together everything in the can, but be mindful of the level of sweetness.

As I note in the recipe, everyone has their particular cheesecake baking quirks, usually based on their oven or aversion to cracked cheesecakes. Sometimes I use a water bath or just a baking pan filled with water for steam, but the addition of the sweet potato puree to this one seems to ward off cracking, but if you have a standard baking method, there’s no need to deviate just for this recipe.

And before the purists get on my case, I know, the recipe says “sweet potato” and I’m using canned yams. I consider that a result of my upbringing as well since we didn’t really know the difference and more often than not bought cans labeled “yams” for the pie. I have made this with actual sweet potatoes–but not actual yams–before, and when it comes to the supermarket aisle, you’ll often see cans with both “yams” and “sweet potatoes” on the label. From what I can tell, what’s in the cans are sweet potatoes, but the cake will still taste great.

Obviously this cheesecake would be a hit at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but don’t be afraid to serve it anytime. Enjoy!

I’ve seen tricks for quickly peeling a clove at a time, but never for peeling an entire head of garlic at once. When I’ve made Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, I follow Ina Garten’s suggestion of quickly placing the cloves into boiling water to loosen up the skins, which works, but unless you have asbestos hands, you’re still dealing with a lot of work. I may have to try this method next time… after I find two appropriate bowls, that is.