I Flip For Food!

We Moved!

2010-04-22T11:39:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone! Just wanted to let everyone know that we finally moved our blog over to http://www.iflipforfood.com/! We're still the same food-loving monsters, we just look sexier. Please come visit us at our new home!

New York City: Le Bernardin

2010-04-20T12:00:00.043-04:00

*Post by Angela.
If you read our last post, you know that Mark and I decimated New York this weekend with our monstrous appetites (think Godzilla). While eating at Ippudo and Grimaldi's (soon to be posted) were both fun experiences, I couldn't wait to write about the crowning moment of the weekend, a surprise belated birthday present from Pam and Jason: Dinner at Chef Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin in mid-town. Le Bernardin is one of five NYC restaurants with 3 Michelin Stars, and Chef Ripert is known as a seafood god. While I didn't take photos this time around, believe me when I say we had an incredible experience there - the beautiful decor, the impeccable service and the exquisitely presented, creative and delicious food added up to one of my favorite dining experiences in my life thus far.

Click below to read more!

We walked in the restaurant for our 10:30 pm reservations and right away, I fell in love with the decor - clean lines, soft lights, and huge glass vases filled with perfect flower arrangements reaching up to the ceiling combined to create an atmosphere of understated elegance, a theme that was reflected in the service and presentation of the dishes. Just so I don't have to keep repeating it, I will say now that I doubt I will ever have better service in my life. Mark and I were hugely impressed by the team tending to our table - they worked together in perfect harmony, clearing and setting the table like a well-oiled machine and making sure that our every need was attended to - all the while, exuding a quiet and unobtrusive warmth. If any restaurant staff was justified in being pretentious and snobby, it would be this one, yet every member of the service staff was friendly and welcoming.

The 4-course, prix-fixe menu is divided into 4 sections: almost raw (appetizers), barely touched (appetizers), lightly cooked (entrees), and dessert. There was also an "upon request" section for those wanting a non-seafood entree option.

We all started off with an amuse-bouche of bay scallop slivers with celery root soup. It was at this early juncture that I realized that the kitchen was not kidding around (not that I really thought it would be). The scallop slivers were meltingly tender and played perfectly off the creamy, light, and surprisingly flavorful soup. Pam noted that she would be happy with her meal if they just served her an entree-sized portion of the dish, and I agreed. My taste buds were more than amused - they were enthralled.

For my first selection, I managed to narrow it down to the kampachi tartare with marinated Japanese cucumber and aged citrus vinegar. I had heard that the Le Bernardin philosophy is "the best fish, prepared simply," and this dish absolutely embodied that ideal. The freshness of the succulent kampachi was highlighted by the brightness of the citrus vinegar, and mirrored by the delicate crunch of the cucumber slivers. The fish was served with rice crisps, which were light with very subtle seasoning to allow the fantatastic taste of the fish to shine.

Mark got the cauliflower couscous, with a warm salad of seasonal vegetables, and an Argan oil vinaigrette. While it may have been the least impressive dish that found its way to our table (and that's what Mark gets for stepping outside of Chef Rippert's seafood wheelhouse) the cauliflower couscous was like nothing we'd ever tasted before and Mark kept discovering different vegetables- each cooked to perfection- in the mixture that crowned the hockey-puck-shaped presentation of couscous.

My sister ordered the sea urchin roe on a bed of jalepeno-wasabi jam, with seaweed salt and wakame-orange scented broth. I didn't taste it, but the presentation was stunning - the roe was served in a sea urchin shell balanced atop a bed of ice.

For my second course, I had no choice but to get the sea urchin risotto with toasted nori, and an urchin-citrus emulsion. I'm a sucker for risotto in general, but paired with sea urchin, my all-time favorite item from the sea? Getting it was a foregone conclusion, and it did not disappoint. For starters, once the plate was placed in front of me, our server drizzled extra sea urchin butter over top. SEA URCHIN BUTTER???!!!! Are you kidding me?! That may be the greatest condiment that was ever created. Chef Ripert, you mad genius, I tip my hat to you, sir. Well-played. The rest of the dish was unbelievable as well - three generous pieces of the freshest sea urchin roe I've ever tasted, resting upon a bed of perfectly cooked, lucious risotto. All of this creamy, buttery goodness might have been overwhelming, but the citrus in the emulsion balanced the dish out to perfection. I think this was my favorite dish of the night.

Mark got the Bacaloa, a grilled salted cod salad, with grapes, garlic chips, almonds, and white gazpacho. The salted cod was matched wonderfully with some really zesty and citrusy flavors. It became an all-around fantastic dish when combined with the grapes and almonds.

For my entree, I got the baked striped wild bass, corn "cannelloni" and a light perigord sauce. This was probably my least favorite dish of the night, but it still outstrips most of the seafood dishes I've had at other restaurants by about 100 miles. It was simpler in comparison with the other dishes in the meal, but still flawlessly executed - fish was beautifully cooked and I liked the sweetness of the corn mixture in the "cannelloni." The sauce was the real revelation here - my understanding is that perigord sauce is made with wine and truffles, and I wish I could have had a bowl of that sauce alone.

Mark got the pan-seared duck breast, turnips, "dolce-forte" sauce, pine nuts and caramelized orange. This was easily Mark's favorite dish of the night. While the dolce-forte sauce was nice, the real star of this simple plate was the caramelized orange and the wonderful citrus flavors that absorbed into the perfectly cooked duck (the server recommended it just a little less than a medium).

For dessert, I got the hazelnut dessert, with Gianduja cream, Oregon hazelnuts, honey, banana, and brown butter ice cream. While it didn't quite blow me away, I really enjoyed it - the hazelnut cream was light and creamy, and not too sweet, the banana was prettily caramelized, and I loved the simple sweetness of the brown butter ice cream.

Mark got the chocolate-peanut dessert, with a dark chocolate, peanut and caramel tart, Meyer lemon puree, peanut powder, and a praline-citrus sorbet. He really enjoyed it, but strangely enough (given Mark's obsession with Chocolate and Peanut as described in our Policy review) he seemed to prefer mine.

The night ended with a complimentary tray of 4 mignardises - tiny, bite-sized desserts. I can't remember exactly what they were, but each was a pretty and tasty little blast of flavor. It was a really nice way to end a wonderful experience. While I may have had (one, maybe two) better overall meals food-wise (IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!), dining at Le Bernardin was just a phenomenal and breathtaking experience. If I ever get I chance to dine at the "Temple of Seafood" again, you better believe I will take it.

New York City: Ippudo

2010-04-20T11:52:00.012-04:00

*Post by Angela.
This weekend, Mark and I were in New York for a quick visit with my sister Pam and her fiancee Jason. We were also in town to eat as much as we possibly could, and we absolutely succeeded (if you know us at all, you know it was a ridiculous amount of food in a very short period of time). We started our epic eating journey with a fantastic Mexican meal in Brooklyn on Friday night (which we'll post about in a few days), and after a fun-filled night, woke up late Saturday morning raring to go.

The day began with Lunch #1 at Ippudo Noodle Shop in the East Village. The restaurant is the first and only American location for the Japanese chain, and Pam had been dying to try it out; unfortunately, every time she had walked by, it had been either packed or closed. We showed up super early to guarantee seating (and to accommodate our very busy eating schedule for the day), and I'm glad we did. Ippudo's rich broths, mouthwatering toppings, and house-made noodles combine to make a very satisfying and tasty bowl of ramen, the ideal fuel for a day of exploring Manhattan.

Click below to see what we ate!

There was already a line in front of the trendy noodle shop when we arrived a few minutes before 11 am; nevertheless, we were seated quickly once the sign was flipped from closed to open. Like Policy in DC, the restaurant's color scheme was dominated by reds and blacks, but I didn't mind it here, as the lines were much sleeker and cleaner, creating a chic, instead of skeevy, atmosphere.

I also liked that the receiving room's adornments announced the restaurant's focus clearly. This is a RAMEN shop, plain and simple.

Even though it was fairly early in the day, I was already hungry (having spent the morning repeating the weekend's mantra in my head - "You will eat more and love it. You will eat more and love it"). So I ordered one of Ippudo's "cold" dishes, the Tako Wasabi (raw octopus in fresh diced wasabi). I loved this simple little dish - the octopus was so very fresh, satisfyingly slippery, yet with a firm bite. And the diced wasabi shocked my taste buds awake.

Tako Wasabi

Ippudo offers five varieties of soup (with different types of broth), as well as a number of extra toppings you can add for $2 more, including poached egg, seasoned bamboo shoots, chasu pork, and braised pork belly.

Both Mark and Pam ordered the Akamaru Modern, tonkotsu soup (pork-based) with Ippudo's house-made noodles, special sauce, miso paste, and fragrant garlic oil. Their bowls of ramen already came with a number of toppings, including chasu pork, half a seasoned boiled egg, beansprouts, kikurage (a.k.a. wood ear mushrooms) and scallions, but because we're talking about Mark and Pam (who shares my pork-belly loving genes), they both added kakuni, or braised pork belly. Both really enjoyed their bowls of ramen, and Mark noted that he really liked the broth, contrasting it to the broth in the pho he's eaten (which he found watery and bland) - he enjoyed how flavorful and thick the pork-based tonkotsu soup was in comparison (this is because it's made by boiling pork bones over high heat for many hours, which breaks the collagen in the bones down into gelatin). Mark and Pam also both absolutely raved about the pork belly, and upon trying a little, I agreed - the kakuni was a gloriously fatty, rich and tender bite.

Akamaru Modern With Braised Pork Belly

I broke from the pack and ordered the special, the Karaka-men. The broth in my soup was similar to that in the Akamaru Modern (tonkotsu broth), but it had the added element of "special blended hot spices." My ramen also came with chasu pork, kikurage, and scallions, as well as cabbage and ground pork, and I added onsen tamago, or poached egg, to the mix. While I really enjoyed the broth from the Akamaru Modern, I LOVED my spicier broth, and the poached egg was cooked to perfection, bursting into my soup with yolky deliciousness.

Karaka-men

We left Ippudo feeling totally satiated and happy, but not overwhelmingly full (which was a blessing, as we still had two more substantial meals to get through that day). I really wish DC had ramen shops like this, which met our need for a quick, filling and tasty meal perfectly.* And with contented stomachs, we wandered out into the city to explore and make our way toward Lunch #2...

*If anyone knows of good ramen shops in DC, please, please let me know.

Date, Goat Cheese & Mint Flatbread w/ Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

2010-04-16T11:44:00.001-04:00

*Post by Mark

Eager to try out our new camera, my lunch yesterday was more about making something I could take a picture of than it was about putting food into my body. So I scraped together a 'kitchen sink' flatbread pizza using only the random items I found in our mostly empty refrigerator. The pictures turned out pretty fantastic, but I was shocked that the flatbread actually came together as well as it did. Hell, I even popped another one in the oven for lunch today.

Click below to see what all went onto the Flatbread!

You can make your own crust, but the store-bought kind worked just fine for me.

Flatbread

The main ingredient, as it dominates the taste of the flatbread were a couple of Medjool Dates. I took the pits out and chopped about four of them into smaller pieces. If you're looking for a hearty pizza without adding sausage, prosciutto or bacon, I couldn't recommend using dates any more. While giving the pizza some serious sweetness, they also might make the carnivore in you forget there's no meat.

Medjool Dates

I found a little bit of generic 'Mexican Blend' Cheese and sprinkled it over the flatbread. Of course, it'd have been really weird if we didn't have goat cheese in the fridge, so I threw some of that on too.

For the base of the flatbread, I used some Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto instead of a traditional sauce. I didn't have any pine nuts, but killed two birds with one stone as the pesto already contained some.

Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Sauce

Lastly, I found some fresh mint and chopped a little up to sprinkle over it. Because it needed something crunchy I crumbled a little bit of crushed pecan on top. I threw it in the oven for about 8-10 minutes and let it bake. When it came out, the flatbread was nice and crispy.

I sliced it up and was really happy with how the ingredients came together. Using the Medjool Dates and goat cheese as a base, I think I have some delicious experiments ahead of me. What else could be good on this?

Policy

2010-04-15T14:13:00.001-04:00

*Post by Mark.

Policy is the kind of place you walk past. I'd actually walked by the eatery's storefront a hundred times before I even realized there was a restaurant behind the poor signage. Once I finally did become aware of its existence, I was quickly surprised to discover it was a trendy lounge; a pre-concert hot spot, even. Then full awareness dawned on me, as I received a Living Social coupon offer (half-off a $50 dollar gift card) and realized that they had more than just a lounge menu. So, let me get this straight... this little storefront that looks like it should be a housewares store is actually a lounge that is actually a restaurant that may actually serve some pretty decent food?

Screw it. The only way to find out for myself is to just go, right? On a recent Wednesday night, Angela and I booked an early reservation. We brought a pair of empty stomachs and wiped our slate of expectations clean.

Click below to see what we ate!

While the host was friendly, our hopes of a really good meal sank upon first glance around the restaurant. Angela had an immediate negative reaction to the color scheme, a really aggressive mix of red and black - think bachelor pad for a balding, skeevy dude in his late 40s. Perhaps making matters worse was the lighting, which draped the shiny red booths in dark shadow.

I was happy to see three LCD tvs behind the bar so I could keep up with my baseball game in between bits of awkward conversation at the table.* I also checked to make sure I hadn't misplaced my iPhone a few times (i.e. my music player) as the dinner soundtrack sounded eerily similar to my own playlists. Our waitress quickly presented herself and told us that the menu featured tapas-styled small plates. I wouldn't normally mention a server by name, but I can say that (Katie?) was everything a good great server should be. She was super knowledgeable about the food and was eager to make recommendations and describe some of the seasonal specialties. She sensed our excitement about the menu and made a point to fuel our enthusiasm by talking about the chef (Brian Murphy, who formerly worked at L'auberge Chez Francois in Great Falls) and some of his ingredients. She made us both feel at home without being intrusive or unprofessional.

Before I get into the food, let me express my love for small plates. I love trying new things, but when relegating myself to only one entree I typically veer towards a comfort zone. On the other hand, when I get to choose several things? I pick a few comforting classics, but also get to try things I rarely eat. Few things make me more upset then when people bash tapas. I'm always hearing people complain that they don't get enough food at tapas restaurants. Yeah? Then ORDER MORE! (end of rant.)

Ahem... We started out by ordering six plates. The first to arrive was the Smoked Duck and Spinach Salad, with organic spinach, Medjool dates, feta cheese, and roasted shallot vinaigrette. It was topped with strands of crispy fried parsnips. If the dish had a low point, it would've been the merely average duck, but the blend of flavors and textures of the other ingredients really made up for it. The dates added a really nice sweetness while the parsnip and red onion gave it a unique touch of crunch.

Smoked Duck and Spinach Salad

The next plate to hit the table were the Madras curry lamb sliders topped with gorgonzola cheese and mint pesto. As Angela and I bit into the baby burgers, our eyes lit up in unison. One thing that's easily noticeable in the picture below is how perfectly portioned and perfectly toasted the bun looks. But more than just that, the lamb inside was amazingly juicy, and was well-complimented and contrasted by the additional flavors. The refreshing mint pesto was the ideal choice of condiment. And the creamy and pungent Gorgonzola was a very assertive and bold note to pair with the curry and mint. Here's where the brilliancy of small plates comes in. A regular-sized burger with these same ingredients would've overwhelmed my taste buds halfway through the sandwich. But thanks to the smaller portion sizes, the possibility for bolder and adventurous flavors really opens up. If the food at Policy is representative of anything, it's the potential of a small plate menu fully realized.

Madras Curry Lamb Sliders

By this point, I started realizing that even the worst selections at Policy could still be stand-out dishes at a majority of other restaurants. Out came the red curried lentils with cauliflower dumplings and pea shoots. I was a big fan of the fried dumplings. The light crisp on the outside gave way to the creamy goodness of the cauliflower puree inside. But, I wasn't particularly moved one way or the other by the lentils. Angela liked them, but I think after two amazing courses my palette was expecting to be pushed to new limits with every bite. For me, this was the lone B+ on the report card.

Red Curried Lentils

Course number four featured sauteed herbed gnocchi with Path Valley goat cheese, oven roasted tomatoes, basil and caramelized onions. The flavors were rich and creamy, and the gnocchi was cooked about as perfectly as I could imagine. If the dish had any flaw, it would be that I wouldn't have minded a little contrast. Maybe some acidity to cut through the richness? Maybe a few pine nuts to introduce a little texture? Otherwise, it was top-notch gnocchi.

Sauteed Herbed Gnocchi

While we were convinced that the lamb sliders could not be topped, the crispy pork belly, with kim-chi, peanut and green onions took aim and conquered. I was really excited to find the chef working with Asian flavors on this one. The pork belly was cooked absolutely perfect with a brilliant caramelization on the exterior. Inside was some of the most tender and fatty pork meat I've ever had, and it had absorbed what tasted like gallons of flavors in the cooking process. So often, it tastes like meat is cooked and then combined with its sauce, but this pork belly was living in blissful matrimony (or shacking up in sin...? either way, they'd formed the perfect union) with all its flavors. Combined with the kim-chi, peanut, and green onion, the dish was unapologetically sweet, spicy, salty, tangy, nutty and refreshing. Again, an entire dish of this indulgent treat would've worn out its welcome, but a few bites each was the perfect allotment.

Crispy Pork Belly

Our sixth and final plate was the crispy veal sweetbreads, with butternut squash, almonds, and parsley gremolata. Maybe my palette had already been around the world and back, but I wasn't completely blown away by this one. It was certainly tasty, if maybe on the plain side. Part of the problem is that one of my favorite dishes ever is the veal sweetbreads at Zaytinya . The brilliance of that dish is that zesty orange segments are used to cut through the taste of the sweetbreads with something acidic. In this dish, the orange you see in the picture is unfortunately no citrus. It's butternut squash, and as much as I love my butternut squash, it matches the heaviness of the sweetbreads a little too closely, and the parsley gremolata didn't quite lend enough acidity to cut through all that. While, it's not really fair to compare it to Zaytinya's masterpiece, I can say that the individual elements of the veal sweetbreads at Policy were executed close to perfection.

Crispy Veal Sweetbreads

In fact, everything we'd had so far had been executed pretty flawlessly. We'd found that the cooking and seasoning of every single dish had been done with the utmost attention to detail. So, in a common move of over-consumption on our behalf, we asked the waitress for the menu. "The dessert menu?" "Uh, no... the dinner menu..."

Katie gave us an understanding smile, and before long we were enjoying our seventh course, the Alaskan halibut, with fingerling potatoes, white clam sauce, sorrel, and ramps. The halibut was lightly breaded and perfectly pan-fried, and... well you get the point. Everything was great.

Alaskan Halibut

On to dessert! As a rule, when I encounter any combination of the Holy Trinity: Chocolate, Peanut Butter and Banana, I don't even read the other options. Generally to save time (and get to my dessert as quick as possible), once I'm handed a dessert menu, I flip it open quickly and look for the buzz words. If I can find them fast enough, I order before the server can even walk away.

Father, Son & Holy Spirit share their respective vices

Policy features a 'Banana Split' with cherry and peanut butter ice creams, peanut butter brittle, banana bread, caramelized banana and a chocolate sauce. The banana had an excellent caramelization (shocker!!) and the banana bread was a nice, unexpected twist. Also, the Holy Trinity has been holding auditions for a fourth band-mate and I think they found it. The cherry ice cream was an excellent addition alongside the peanut butter ice cream.

Banana Split

I'd hardly heard anything about the food, so I had no expectations for Policy before I set foot inside the restaurant. Upon walking in, we were slightly put-off and kinda confused by the message the interior design was trying to send. But after we walked out, all of those negatives had become a foggy blur. While Policy may not be have a big sign out front, or be getting the buzz and acclaim its food deserves, the memories we took away from Chef Brian Murphy's menu stand out like billboards with neon lights.

*Angela's note: He's joking. We are a tornado of intelligent, interesting conversation and witty banter at all times. You're joking, right, honey? Sweettart? Hello?

Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad with Tahini

2010-04-15T08:29:00.003-04:00

*Post by Angela.
Two vegetarian recipe posts in two days? The world has gone crazy. I actually made this beautiful salad from Orangette a couple of weeks back for my annual Easter/Passover dinner (a dinner I didn't end up posting about because as the wine started flowing, I quickly forgot to take photos of what I was cooking). Cooking dinner for my friends can sometimes be a challenging (but rewarding) task - in my little group of lovable maniacs, I have a couple of vegetarians (and those who oppose them, which means EXTRA meat), a couple of celiac sufferers (no gluten!), those who won't eat pork, those who won't eat seafood, and one who is so particular about food I maintain an actual physical list of things he won't eat.

This meal around, I wanted to make some kosher-for-Passover food that my Jewish vegetarian friend (who will normally eat anything, as long as it doesn't include meat) could enjoy as the rest of us were busy chowing down on the roasted lamb.* While it did require the extra step of finding kosher tahini, this salad was well worth it - everyone loved this earthy yet bright, slightly sweet and tangy salad, and it's something I'm looking forward to making again in the near future.

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the salad:

1 medium butternut squash (about 2 to 2 ½ lb.)

3 medium garlic cloves, minced

½ tsp. ground allspice

2 Tbsp. olive oil

Salt

One 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1/4 cup parsley, coarsely chopped

First, I preheated the oven to 425 degrees, peeled, seeded and chopped the squash, and minced up the garlic.

I mixed the squash, garlic, allspice, olive oil, and some salt in a large mixing bowl, making sure that all the squash pieces were evenly coated.

I then placed the mixture on a baking sheet and put it in the oven for about 25 minutes until the squash was soft. I removed the pan from the oven and let everything cool.

Then I combined the squash with the chickpeas and parsley in a large mixing bowl and moved on to the sauce.

List of ingredients for the sauce

2 medium garlic cloves

Pinch of salt

3 ½ Tbsp. lemon juice

3 Tbsp. well-stirred tahini

2 Tbsp. water

2 Tbsp. olive oil, plus more to taste

First, I minced the garlic very finely with a pinch of salt, making kind of a garlic paste, and whisked it together with the lemon juice in a small bowl. Then I added the tahini and whisked to blend. I added the water and olive oil, whisked again, and seasoned with salt and pepper. Finally, I added the sauce to the butternut squash and chickpeas and tossed to coat.

This dish was not only a hit at dinner, but in my stomach for lunch for the next couple of days, both tasty and filling. I don't often cook with butternut squash (or chickpeas for that matter), but I loved the combination of flavors and textures. It's recipes like this that make cooking for finicky/allergy-prone/difficult friends a snap!

*I also made the vegetarian version of twitter friend @Evan_Halperin's Matzah Ball Soup, which was so, so yummy (thanks, Evan!) and this potato and spinach gratin from Smitten Kitchen, which disappeared in a heartbeat.

Potato and Leek Flat Bread

2010-04-14T09:16:00.005-04:00

*Post by Angela.
Lately, the stuff we've been eating at home I haven't felt was worth posting about (or am kind of embarrassed about eating) - pasta with store-bought pesto, sandwiches thrown together from leftovers, frozen goods, canned sardines and rice...sigh. But last night, even though I was feeling super lazy, I wanted to eat something I didn't heat in the microwave. With a little assist from some refrigerated pizza dough, I threw together this tasty potato and leek flat bread from Real Simple in virtually no time at all.

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the flat bread:
1 lb. refrigerated pizza dough
A half a handful of cornmeal
1 large leek
1/2 lb small red potatoes
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
kosher salt & fresh ground black pepper
Crumbled goat cheese
1/4 cup shredded Gruyere

First, I preheated the oven to 450 degrees, and prepped the toppings by cutting the leek (only the white and light green parts) into thin strips, and slicing the potatoes really thinly with my mandoline. Unfortunately, in doing so, I ended my streak of non-injurious mandoline use - I took off the tip of my thumb and had to put together the rest of this dish with my hand swaddled in paper towels. Mark wanted me to post a picture of it, but that's really disgusting. Instead, look! Pretty prepped leeks and potatoes!

In a large bowl, I combined the leeks and potatoes with the thyme leaves, oil, and about a tsp. each salt and pepper, making sure that all the ingredients were covered sufficiently with oil. If you don't do this, there's a chance that your toppings could burn. And that would be gross to eat. And it would cause your tiny apartment to possibly fill up with smoke. And then you would be in a bad mood for the next couple of days because your entire living area smells like burnt pizza, including your "Future Survivor of the Zombie Apocalypse" shirt you wanted to wear to Happy Hour on Friday.

What I'm telling you is that it's important that everything gets good and covered in the oil, okay?

Next, I rolled the dough out onto a lightly floured surface until it was about 1/4" thick. This was my attempt at stretching it into a rectangle.

I sprinkled a baking sheet with cornmeal and placed the dough on top. I made a nice little crumbled layer of goat cheese, and then spread the vegetable mixture evenly. I topped it all off with the Gruyere. The goat cheese was not in the original, but it was in the fridge, so I thought I'd toss it in.

I baked the flatbread in the oven for about 25 minutes, until the potatoes and leeks were tender, and voilà! Yummy, quick and light dinner for me and Mark! Although in truth, he didn't get to eat much of it - I tore this bad boy up.

PS 7's

2010-04-13T07:59:00.017-04:00

*Post by Angela.
Here's a question for all you foodies: When entertaining guests, either visiting or new to the area, do you take them to tried and true favorites? Or do you seek out hyped-up hot spots you've been meaning to try yourself? Mark and I tried the latter approach on Friday night, when we headed to PS 7's, on the corner of 8th and I Street in Chinatown to meet an old buddy of his who had just moved back to DC after a long hiatus.

PS 7's is number 66 on Washingtonian's 100 Best Restaurants List for 2010, and has recently been getting a lot of press for its creative cocktails, so we thought it would be a fun place to hit up after a long and stressful week...The service was good, the company was great and the drinks were fantastic. But the food - while pretty creative in theory, and not necessarily bad in practice - could have used a little help. Bottom line? I'd go back for Happy Hour in a heartbeat, and I might be convinced to give the food another try, though Mark and I would both order very differently. But I think I may just take my next guests to Oyamel.

Click below to see what we ate!

We intentionally arrived at the restaurant about 15 minutes before our 7 pm reservation in order to sample a couple of famed D.C. mixologist Gina Chervesani's creations. The bar was already super-crowded with the happy hour masses, but despite being slammed, Gina spotted us standing around and warmly handed us a couple of drink menus. I got the gnome water, with Hendrick's gin, cucumber water, lemon, and lavender syrup. I really loved my drink. It was light and so, so refreshing - the perfect drink for warmer weather.

Gnome Water

Mark got the sun and Sand, with rootbeer crusta, fresh orange, Brugal rum, and vanilla. He liked it a lot (think Creamsicle), but I don't think it was quite as good as mine - although I gotta say, I'm a sucker for any beverage with cucumber.

Sun & Sand

Mark's friend showed up right on time, and we were seated and greeted by our quiet but friendly server, who was quick with a smile and recommendations. When the bread basket arrived at the table, it looked like it could be great. Unfortunately, the taste didn't quite live up to the aesthetics - all the bread was a little dry and dense.

The appetizers were better, but still had some flaws. I started with fried oysters, with grapefruit segments, shaved fennel, and a citrus gastrique, as did our guest. The oysters were fried really well - crispy on the outside, succulent on the inside. And I really liked the concept of the dish - I love citrus and I have almost inappropriate feelings about shaved fennel, and these lighter elements did balance nicely against the fried main attraction. But the whole thing was too lightly seasoned (if at all), so the overall dish came out a little bland. Honestly, a sprinkling of salt would have totally elevated the dish.

Fried Oysters

Mark got the House-Made Petite Hot Dogs with pommes frites. He thought these were good. But on a plate like this it shouldn't be the pommes frites that stand out the most. The dogs were cute but forgettable.

House Made Petite Hot Dogs

For my entree, I ordered the special, pan-seared opah with quail eggs, kumquat, and pork belly. I liked this a lot - it was a pretty dish, and the opah was very fresh, with a perfect sear (although again, could have stood a little more seasoning). I loved how the little quail eggs exploded with gooey, yolk-y goodness upon the slightest pressure, and the pork belly was nice (as it almost always is). It was a little insubstantial, but I was satisfied nonetheless.

Pan-Seared Opah Special

Mark got the pork loin stuffed with a mixture of leeks, spinach, bacon, and Parmesan, and served with a sherry pan jus. He was really unhappy with his dish, and thought it was completely underwhelming. While he didn't love the pork, his main complaint is that he wished there were some sort of accompanying side. I liked the bite I had, but wasn't blown away by it. (Mark's friend got the rockfish with leeks, mushrooms, cauliflower and pastis, and liked it a lot).

Stuffed Pork Loin

Finally, Mark finished his meal off with the cookies and milk (chocolate, peanut butter, and oatmeal). The brown-bag presentation was a nice little touch.

Cookies & Milk, presentation

The three cookies were warm and washed down nicely with a bit of milk.

Cookies & Milk

Our friend got the chocolate Guinness brownie, which was topped with pomegranate grenadine, chocolate crumbles, and a Guinness reduction. Mark had a bite and shockingly said that it was a little too rich (due in part to the pomegranate). Our friend seemed to like it okay, though.

Chocolate Guinness Brownie

He also asked for a side of ice cream, a request our server was happy to accommodate. The ice cream probably helped with the richness of his brownie.

Side of Vanilla ice cream

The meal may have had its flaws, but it ended with a nice touch - complimentary chocolate truffles! They were good, but a bit much for me. Mark, being the chocolate monster he is, appreciated them more.

Complimentary Chocolate Truffles

Absolutely go to PS 7's for the cocktails - they are as creative, refreshing and delicious as advertised . Did I mention that we also downed "The Cure" (Miller High Life, Domaine de Canton, and ginger), "Master & the margarita" (Milagro, lime, apricot, marigold tea, and citrus salt), and the seasonal punch (don't ask me, at this point, I was having trouble remembering Mark's name)? While PS 7's may have earned its place on the Top 100 on the merits of its drink menu... the food? Needs to catch up a little.

BGR The Burger Joint

2010-04-12T08:27:00.006-04:00

*Post by Mark.

As a screenwriter, I'm often crafting ridiculous stories that have titles and log lines but will (for obvious reasons) never be written. One such idea is an action-comedy called 'Take Out' and is the bitter story of rival Chinese delivery joints whose delivery men may or may not be experts in the arts of Kung-Fu. While my mildly-offensive script will most likely never make it past the one-line description written above, I think my subconscious is seeking out alternative means of expression. I've recently managed to create a fictional rivalry between two real life Dupont Circle burger establishments that can and must be settled in some elaborate burger throw-down that only takes place in my head (and I suppose in my tummy, too).

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Dupont's Rogue States- a happening new burger stop a few blocks south of the circle. Today, in all fairness, and to avoid the all-out North Dupont vs. South Dupont gang riots (that could only be conjured up in a bad screenplay) that would surely ensue without equal treatment, I'll be taking a look at the north-side's BGR: The Burger Joint .

Click below to see what we ate!

Can you imagine a Dupont Circle gang-riot? I can only imagine that it would resemble 'West Side Story' except with a drastically higher dancing-to-knife-fighting ratio.*

"Look how big this cheeseburger is, In America..."

Gone are the days of walking into 50's-style diners with jukeboxes and waitresses in roller skates. Perhaps in the time since I was a child the 50s have gone from nostalgic to prehistoric. But at BGR, the window of nostalgia has shifted into the 1980s. The first thing you see when you walk into the door is the blue wall lined with cover art from the decade's greatest rock and pop albums. Approaching the counter is like walking through a Casey Kasem countdown from twenty-five years ago. Phil Collins' 'In the Air Tonight' was working the smooth magic of its slow build as we stepped up to the counter.

It was a little bit of a bummer that there were no menus when we arrived. The chalk board by the registers lists the restaurant's different burgers by name only. So without a menu, who's to know, for instance, that a Greek Burger is actually made out of lamb (you don't even want to know what's in the Baby Burger). Though the cashier told us she'd be happy to answer any questions, it resulted in me just pointing adventurously and asking for, 'umm.. how about that one?'

That one, turned out to be The Southwestern- a burger made with ground beef, infused with chipotles, poblanos, onion and chilis. It's topped with a big slice of pepper jack cheese and makes room for some black bean salsa and mojo sauce between its buns (wow, sorry... I wasn't even trying to make that sound sexual.) I got it with a side of sweet potato fries. (Yeah, I'm still thinking about the sheer inappropriateness of that last description. Seriously. I'm sorry. Drop it. Okay?)

The Southwestern burger w/ 'The Orange Standard' Sweet Potato Fries

The Southwestern falls somewhere in between a burger and a Sloppy Joe in the wide spectrum of meat sandwiches. The beef was cooked with enough juicy fillings that it crumbled and broke away more like you'd imagine from the Burger's Sloppy counterpart. This one was very juicy and loaded up with enough of BGR's signature 'mojo' sauce to have a very sweet touch. The bun was small and a little boring, but for the most part, I enjoyed the burger. I found the portion to be on the may-need-to-order-two-next-time side of things.

Cross-Section of The Southwestern

The sweet potato fries (or 'The Orange Standard' as they call them) were very mediocre. Since my dining experience, I have become aware that additional seasonings (garlic, parmesan, rosemary) could be added to the sweet potato fries upon request. I'd like to blame the absence of said seasonings on the lack of menus, but having already been a number of times when the menu was available, I can't say I was ever aware of their availability.

Angela ordered The Greek- BGR's lamb burger (there's also an Ahi Tuna burger, a Turkey burger, a Pork Burger and when it's in season, a Lobster roll?). The Greek is ground leg of lamb seasoned with cumin, mint, and garlic, topped with tzatziki sauce and feta cheese. To mix things up, Angela got a side of grilled asparagus spears (deemed 'The Green Standard'. It should be noted that the original french fries are called 'The Gold Standard') which come topped with a hefty sprinkle of Parmesan. You could really tell the tasty asparagus had been made-to-order and there just might be a little bit of nutritional value hiding in there somewhere.

The Greek w/ 'The Green Standard' Asparagus Spears

Angela ordered it rare, and was quick to notice it was much more cooked than she would have preferred. Even so, the lamb was tender and the feta and tzatziki added some real interesting contrasts and flavors. From the couple of bites she kindly donated, I think I preferred her lamb to my Southwestern. In previous visits, Angela really liked The Wellington while I've really enjoyed the Classic burger topped with bacon, but I rather disliked their Turkey Burger.

Cross-Section of The Greek

So, back we come to this issue of the throw-down-to-end-all-throw-downs. On the north side there is BGR, and on the south side is Rogue States. Rogue States' thick, fluffy bun had left me wanting a little less of it while BGR's thin bun made the burger seem less than substantial. While I enjoyed BGR's flavorful sauces like the mojo on The Southwestern or the creamy tzatziki on The Greek, it was refreshing to find Rogue State's flavors baked subtly into the burgers. Both places show a commitment to quality beefs and meats, but the edge remains on the side of Rogue States.

Mind you, this merely makes Rogue States king of Dupont. Ray's is still the grand champion of DC and a long overdue upcoming visit to Chef Spike's Good Stuff Eatery threatens to steal that crown.

BGR is also known for having some good shakes and features a new flavor each month. This month's variety is Cherry Blossom. It sounded awesome, but I've got to keep in top dancing shape should that Dupont Circle gang-riot ever present itself.

*Angela's Note: As long as we're imagining things here, I should let you know that in my head, I'm a very accomplished knife-fighter. This may or may not be true in real life as well.

Singapore Bistro

2010-04-09T11:28:00.004-04:00

*Post by Mark.
Sometimes a secret can tear a good relationship apart. But before that 22-year old cocktail waitress goes and posts about our affair on her myspace page... let me assure you that this secret actually brought Angela and I closer together. We've been together for about a year now and little did I know, she's been keeping a big secret from me (though it's probably more fair to say that she's told me a hundred times and I just haven't been listening). After a year of listening to me whine about DC's non-existent Asian food options, Angela finally broke down and let the classified become clarified. After a recent happy hour in the Farragut neck of woods, she took me to one of her old stomping grounds- Singapore Bistro, on 19th Street between L and M.

Click below to see what we ate!

When we walked in, the restaurant was half-empty but still bustling with (drink-induced) energy. At first, I thought the restaurant was a tiny little hole, but we were led up the stairs where I realized there was a second level with more seating and a bar. Packed with happy-hour drinkers (I'd guess mostly law students and young professionals) I felt the vibe of a frat party that was beginning to wind down... and I mean that in the best possible way. Don't get me wrong, the place is clean and boasts a colorful and festive vibe. But, I usually don't go to Asian restaurants for the service or ambiance, and Singapore Bistro seems to have crafted a really unique, energetic and inviting atmosphere that sets them apart from every other Pan-Asian joint on the block.

We settled into a cozy two-top near the bar, and maybe it was having been to a happy hour of our own (Mackey's anyone?), but we started ordering, last-meal-on-death-row style. I was surprised our server had enough paper to write it all down because we ordered about half the menu. The first item in our mini food parade to hit the table was the crispy spring rolls with fried ground beef, bean thread noodle, and mushrooms wrapped in rice paper and fried. I'm not the biggest advocate for mushrooms, but I'll eat anything fried, and these were no disappointment.

Crispy Spring Rolls

We also got the Szechuan spicy ravioli with pork. Merely foreplay to the main course, but another spot-on hit nonetheless.

Szechuan Spicy Ravioli with Pork

Angela was hungry for some sushi (some? how about all?) but I opted for a traditional entree getting the Indonesian Panggang, with grilled chicken, sweet soy sauce and crushed peanuts. It was also plated with skewers of grilled broccoli and carrot. I'm a major proponent of Thai food- specifically anything with a peanut sauce or crushed peanut- but I can't say any of it compares to this Indonesian version. I could eat this meal three times a day for the rest of my life and not mutter a complaint. The sauce was a blend of bitter and sweet- making it the Asian cousin of a delicious mole (Okay, no, I've thought about it and that makes no sense)... Bottom line is I've been having sexy dreams about this Panggang for a week now.

Indonesian Panggang, with Grilled Chicken

Angela ordered several sushi rolls, including the D.C. roll, the Special California Roll, the Crunchy Salmon Roll, and a Spicy Tuna Roll. Unfortunately, she ate several pieces before remembering to take the picture (and by several, I mean a hundred. Did I mention, we got a lot of food?). She didn't find it to be outstanding, but definitely solid for the price. Being the standout boyfriend I am, I thought I'd help her put away all that food. The D.C. roll (pictured below; bottom left) was especially awesome, filled with shrimp, avocado, cream cheese and then topped off with a generous helping of crab and wasabi tobiko. I also appreciate that Singapore Bistro lists 'Crunchy' as an ingredient... because it's probably my second favorite ingredient after 'Scrumptious'.

Variety of Sushi Rolls

As we scarfed down our food, we couldn't help but notice the activity at the bar. The bartender was teaching the loosened-tie drink squad a little song and dance as they put back sake bombs. I think it involved shouting, "I love Sake! I love Bomb! Sake! Bomb! Sake! Bomb!" a couple of quick turns (like you're about to hit a pinata) and then a quick fist pound on the bar and bottoms up. I thought I might like to give this a try as I love both Sake AND Bomb, but I wasn't sure how well the alcohol would mix with the four pound food baby gestating in my stomach (ultra-sound says it's gonna be a girl!!).

We were stuffed and about ready to wander home, when the bartender came by and asked us if we wanted dessert. We informed him we were completely full and couldn't possibly eat another bite. He kept going on and on about this dessert that he had created... some tempura fried cheesecake. It sounded fantastic we assured him, but respectfully declined, asking for our check instead. No dessert for us...

What we might have looked like had we also been blue

Okay, who are we kidding? We got dessert. It's Tempura fried cheesecake, people! And I don't even have to tell you how awesome it was. Just look at this glob of goodness.

Tempura Fried Cheesecake

As we walked home in the rain, buzzed and a full of fried dessert, I couldn't believe Angela hadn't already brought this spot to my attention. This time her dark little secret had worked to my advantage, but I also found myself wondering what else she wasn't telling me... and what about those men's shoes I found in her room last month... they weren't even my size...

Angela says she has no idea how the shoes got there but that Singapore Bistro has really good delivery, but half the fun is the restaurant's environment. I implore everyone to check it out post haste.

Zaytinya special: lamb sandwiches

2010-04-07T13:10:00.014-04:00

* Guest post by Calypso

Okay, two preliminary items to disclose:

1) The Satan's Ashes spices have already arrived, and they are sitting on my table on home. Well, levitating over my table demonically, glaring at me such that my mouth burns even to gaze upon its fearsome countenance. You get the gist.

2) I am not yet ready, my training requires more time.

So, there will be more Rocky-esque spicy-food-training montages to come. But god, it's 85 degrees outside. And, speaking of god, it's Greek easter!!!! Or something, I'm somewhat confused by exactly what Zaytinya is celebrating, but oh lord, do I love the way they celebrate.

I was tipped off that Zaytinya does an annual Greek Easter celebration featuring lamb pita sandwiches. Being a good little guest food blogger, I trekked all the way out there to make sure it was up to our strict standards.

Zaytinya's patio section includes a number of small tables and a large picnic table set aside just for the occasion. There's a lamb on a spit, I assume for tomorrow's sandwiches:

The small structure busting into the left side of my frame here is the service cart (my inner photographer is whining about composition, but he knows not what the smell of roasting lamb does to my inner-but-increasingly-outer foodie's brain). I didn't get a pic of the whole setup, because I'm far more self-conscious about snapping photos in restaurants than my gracious hosts here at IF4F. I watched them set up for a while, nervous about strolling onto the patio sans hostess, and finally struck up the nerve to ask the man with the cart what the story was. He assured me that the chef was just inside getting the bread, and to come on over.

Oh, I should mention, the man behind the cart, at least for a while, was some "Mike Isabella" character. Some people seem to know him already, or something. I think he was the first person to cook through the interwebs or something.

So, I forked over my $9 for a lamb sandwich and iced tea and a minute later, I was sitting down on a beautiful "spring" day with my grub. I was tempted, in a continuing effort to ruin this blog, to post a full three pages reviewing the iced tea and then maybe a sentence about the sandwich. I then realized I'd be pretty bored by paragraph two, and no one likes to hear me talk more than I do, so that'd be hell on y'all. The iced tea was exactly what you'd expect, nothing mind blowing or disappointing. I don't particularly care for iced tea, but on a day like today it was welcome.

Now, on to the sandwich:

It's hard to get scale from the photo, but the sandwich is not huge. Readers with big stomachs will walk away wanting a little something extra, but the portion was perfect for a hot summer day. The sanwich is served on a warm pita (I'd swear it was freshly made, but I didn't actually see it come out of the oven), topped with some lettuce, a heaping portion of lamb, tzatziki with diced cucumbers, (marinated, I think) red onion slivers, and green onions. While the sandwich is just a medium on the size scale, it's not because they skimped on the lamb. Forks are handy to pick up the loose bits that fall off, and you'll want each morsel. The meat is tender and flavorful, though it didn't have as much of a char taste to it as I expected. It did, however, practically melt in your mouth. Greek food, especially lamb, is a little tough for me, because tzatziki is something I've learned to tolerate but not love. Perhaps it was the super-hot weather, or maybe this is just really really good (I lean to the latter), but this sauce was light, cool, and very mild. I didn't get a blast of cucumber or a strong yogurt taste, though it still had a wonderful yogurty texture. The onions added good texture, though I didn't taste mine much through the lamb.

So, for $7, you get a fantastic lamb pita sandwich, I'd say it's a great deal.

Now, as I said before, the sandwich may not entirely fill you up. Never fear, good readers, guest poster Calypso's lunch guest, let's call him, um, Carol. Yeah, Carol. Not because he treasures his privacy, more because he seems like a Carol. Kinda judgy, and always up in your business. You know the type. So, Carol says "Let's go get some frozen yogurt!" Readers, nobody loves a frozen yogurt more than this man, but I was raised on the real stuff. The good old frozen yogurt, that was essentially just low(er) fat ice cream. Soft, sweet, and probably just a slight label change away from soft-serve ice cream. These days, everyone is all about Tangy-Sour this or Mr. Roboto's Yogurt Distillery that, places where the yogurt tastes sour and nasty and you find flavors like "pro-biotic" and "miso." No. Thank. You. I made these feelings abundantly clear to Carol, who assured me that this place was "the good kind." And yea, though Carol has a silly name, he knows his fro-yo.

Enter "Fro-Zen-Yo," or possibly "Frozen Yo," a (new?) little joint at 10th and F NW that still has a tarp for a sign. You enter, grab a bowl, serve yourself from the sixteen flavors available, add toppings, and then pay a measly $0.39 per ounce at the weigh in. Toppings included lots of fruit, crackery things, M&M type stuff, and, I kid you not, crushed peanut butter cups. Those things are more than 39 cents per ounce at the vending machine! I will start going to Fro-Zen-Yo for bowls of peanut butter cups now, me thinks.

The sixteen flavors are presented in pairs, using the good ole machines with three levers: left, right, and SWIRL. SWIRL, being vastly superior to anything regardless of the flavors involved, must always be capitalized. The pairings range from the predictable (chocolate and vanilla) to the bizarre (cheesecake and cappucino) to the awesome (peanut butter and cookies n cream) to the sad (pistachio, unpaired, for nothing ever goes with pistachio). Carol went with a swirl of chocolate and cheesecake. "swirl" there must be lower case, even at the start of a sentence, for it was not a natural SWIRL but a hand-swirled abomination unto the Greek gods (who like nasty tangy yogurt anyway, it seems). It tasted, unsurprisingly like cheesecake. He loved it, I was respectful of its authenticity. I had a chocolate and vanilla SWIRL with peanut butter cups and gummi bears. the bowl o' goodness pictured above was about $4.50. And awesome.

So, there you go, foodies, two big thumbs up all around.

Zaytinya will be serving the lamb sandwiches at lunchtime (starting around 11:45, it seems) through April 16th. (google map)

And when you're done with that, go stock up on some SWIRL at Frozen-Yo. (google map)

Postscript: When I told Carol he'd be mentioned in the review, he insisted that I say the sandwiches were, his emphasis, "TOO SMALL." I think they were perfect for a light lunch, though certainly not if I was normal-hungry. In weather like this, I don't know that I would've been able to eat two, but I would've gotten close. That was Carol's only added criticism here, though at that point he didn't know what his pseudonym would be.

Potenza

2010-04-05T10:59:00.004-04:00

*Post by Angela.
Expectations are funny things. Whenever I go to a restaurant with low expectations, I often find myself giving the thumbs up to dishes I would have merely tolerated at a "better" restaurant. The reverse is also true - whenever I go to a restaurant with high expectations, I tend to be more quick to disappointment with dishes that I would have loved somewhere else. We experienced the latter feeling the other night, when we finally made it to Potenza on the corner of 15th and H Street after hearing nothing but rave reviews from a number of friends and Twitter people. The service was okay, and the dishes were solid, but with the exception of one of our appetizers, nothing we ate was particularly memorable. I'd go again for a quick and casual dinner (or for happy hour - the bar is gorgeous), but think I'll turn elsewhere if I want great Italian food.

Click below to see what we ate!

When we walked into the restaurant for our 5 pm reservation, there were already quite a few parties waiting to be seated. We were told by the host that we'd be seated in a few moments, but we sat for probably 10 minutes before being shown to our table. I was a little confused, since the restaurant was mostly empty, but it was no big deal.

The decor was an interesting mix of modern and Old World-y, and set a casual tone for the dining experience. Mark noted that at first, he thought it looked a little tacky, but it grew on him. We both liked that the kitchen was open.

Potenza has some fun-looking cocktails, and so Mark ordered the Vespa, Tagliatella liquor, cherry infused grappa, blood orange, Prosecco, fresh lemon and orange bitters served in a chilled martini glass with an orange sugared rim. I think I liked the drink more than he did - it wasn't overly sweet, but had a nice tartness.

We started with a bread basket, which I liked for its variety, if not for the actual bread itself (which was okay). Mark liked the bread, but I sort of expected better (expectation raises its ugly head again!), considering that Potenza has its own bakery. But it was accompanied by a really great balsamic vinegar & olive oil mixture (sorry, no pic!) with chunks of garlic and onion.

At our server's suggestion, we got the Arancini alla Salsiccia di Cinghiale, fried risotto balls stuffed with wild boar sausage and provolone. I loved these. The rice was perfectly cooked - tender, but firm - and didn't overwhelm the fantastic flavor of the sausage, which was a little nutty and slightly sweet. The risotto balls were served atop a creamy, herb-y sauce that Mark really liked. I could have eaten two (or three!) more plates of this.

Arancini alla Salsiccia di Cinghiale

We also got the Rucola e Portobello, listed with arugula, portobello, charred lemon and olive oil. Both Mark and I had a couple of problems with this dish. First and foremost, look at the charred lemon. Wait, no, you can't, because there wasn't any! Which was a shame, because we were looking forward to it. Secondly, it was just kind of a boring dish, and something I could have thrown together at home. That being said, the mushrooms were nicely cooked. The fact that this dish didn't go over that well with us is partially our own fault - we should learn to order better.

Rucola e Portobello

For my entree, I got the Rigatoni and Sunday gravy, with meatball, spicy fennel sausage, spare rib, brasciole, and ricotta. I really liked the various meats - each was cooked until fork-tender, and nicely seasoned. The rigatoni was a little too al dente for my liking, but Mark didn't have a problem with the firmness. What he did have a problem with was the sauce - he thought it was too watery. I didn't mind it as much, although from the "gravy" in the title, I was expecting something much thicker.

Rigatoni and Sunday Gravy

Mark ordered the Gnocchi agli Spinaci, which was listed on the menu as containing "spinach gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce and toasted walnuts." When the dish made it to the table, Mark was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of cauliflower. He was halfway through the dish when all of a sudden, he looked up and asked, "Is this meat?" Sure enough, the dish also included some sort of meat, but we're not sure what it was, although Mark theorized that it was probably veal. Now, while the meat was unexpected, it wasn't necessarily a problem for either of us. But, it would have been a really BIG problem for a vegetarian diner. I kind of think that MEAT is something that should always be listed as an ingredient. Apart from the surprise meat (which was pretty tender, actually), we both liked the dish okay. The texture of the gnocchi was absolutely perfect, soft and pillow-y, but neither of us was crazy about the sauce, which didn't taste of gorgonzola at all. Also, the "toasted walnuts" must have been hanging out smoking in the alley with the charred lemon from our salad, because they had seemingly been replaced by black olives and the cauliflower. We sat and wondered if maybe the wrong dish had been brought to our table, but there are no other gnocchi dishes on the menu.

Gnocchi agli Spinaci

Anyway, we also got a side of creamy polenta (which the server had forgotten to put in, and so it came after we were already finished with our entrees). Mark has ordered polenta at Italian places a couple of times now, and both times he's been disappointed, but I'm pretty sure it's because he thinks it'll be more firm (like the polenta you buy in tubes at the store). I liked Potenza's polenta just fine - true to the menu, it was very creamy, and well-seasoned to boot.

Creamy Polenta

Because we had a long night ahead of us (drinks with friends and then a Vampire Weekend show!) we decided to skip dessert. We walked out of the restaurant full but a little disappointed - from all the recommendations we got for Potenza, we were both expecting something special and ended up getting what seemed like kind of a mediocre meal. I think that maybe if we had gone in without such high expectations, we would have enjoyed it a lot more. Knowing what I know now, if I was in the area, I'd go back, but I can get as good, if not better Italian food closer to home.

Sette Osteria

2010-04-03T06:53:00.004-04:00

*Post by Angela.
On the first of the absolutely perfect days this week (weather-wise), our only thoughts were to eat outside. We didn't care where, we didn't care what, we just wanted to be sitting on a patio somewhere, sipping drinks, eating decent food, and relaxing. We fully intended to go to Zorba's Cafe right off the Circle (based on the recommendations of Twitter friends @Evan_Halperin and @thriftydccook), but the patio was packed like a can of sardines (ooh, sardines, yum!), so we walked up the street until we got to Sette Osteria, on the corner of Connecticut and R Street. We've eaten at Sette before and thought it was very good, if not outstanding; this visit confirmed our impressions - good pasta, decent pizza, solid service and pretty great prices.

Click below to see what we ate!

We did have to wait about 10 minutes before we were seated, so we had a seat at the relatively long and lovely bar. Our bartender was warm and welcoming - I think he may have felt a little lonely, since everyone was abandoning him to try to sit outside.

Once we were seated on the patio, we started with a plate of bread and some olive oil. Sette's complimentary bread is the same bread they use for the crust of their pizza; standing alone, it was very tasty - flaky and crusty on the outside, warm and doughy on the inside, and perfectly seasoned throughout. Mark especially liked it.

Feeling very spring-like in the warm weather, we opted for at least one lighter appetizer, the Caprese salad, with vine-ripened tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, and basil, and drizzled with oil olive and sprinkled with sea salt. While the salad was nothing special, it was light and refreshing dish...

Caprese Salad

...which cannot be said for our other appetizer, Suppli (rice balls in tomato sauce around pieces of mozzarella, coated in bread crumbs and fried), and Crocchette (potato and gorgonzola mixture coated in bread crumbs and fried). Both the suppli and crocchette were incredibly rich, but really satisfying and not overly greasy. I preferred the suppli, which exploded with tomato-ey and cheesy flavor in my mouth; I liked the super-dense crocchette, but didn't really taste the gorgonzola.

Suppli & Crocchette

For his entree, Mark ordered the Gnocchi alla Sorrentina, with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil (he and gnocchi were having a passionate affair, but things got too intense and they had to take a little time apart; this was their first encounter since the falling out). He really liked the dish - the gnocchi were relatively light and delicate, and not overwhelmed by the simple tomato sauce and creamy, mild mozzarella.

Gnocchi alla Sorrentina

I ordered the Indiavolata Pizza, with spicy pork sausage, mozzarella, and broccoli rabe. I enjoyed the flavor combination a lot, particularly the nuttiness and slight pungency of the broccoli rabe (I've actually never had broccoli rabe on pizza before!). But the "spicy" pork sausage wasn't that spicy, and a generous sprinkling of red pepper flakes really helped out with my enjoyment of the pizza. Mark agreed.

Indiavolata Pizza

As I said before, we both liked the bread used for the crust on its own a lot; as a pizza base, it didn't fare quite as well. I took a photo of the underneath of the crust, which I think illustrates its major flaw - although flaky and nicely seasoned and charred, it was a little too light to support the weight of all the toppings (you can see a little break in the crust). Still, while I don't necessarily think that Sette's pizza stacks up against some of DC's pizza powerhouses, it is highly enjoyable and satisfying, especially for the price.

Pizza upskirt (whee!)

While there are better Italian joints in the city, I like going to Sette Osteria for consistently good food at relatively cheap prices. As the weather gets warmer, it's nice to have a few places like this (close to my house, and with outdoor seating) in the rotation - I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up here a few more times over the next couple of months and through the summer.

Chicken Breasts with Whole-Grain Mustard Sauce

2010-04-01T10:07:00.003-04:00

*Post by Angela.
Right now, I have 5 huge, hard-covered cookbooks on my living room table (plus a handful of cooking magazines). Every week, Mark and I salivate over the gorgeous photos in these cookbooks, picking out recipes we'd like to make/think we could handle making. Yet every time I cook, I find myself running to the Internets (all hail the Internets!) to find recipes. I think it's mostly due to the fact that most recipes I find online (especially those from allrecipes or recipezaar) have suggestions and alterations posted from people who have actually made the recipes; it might also be because I can no longer read anything that isn't on a computer screen. Whatever the reason, I've decided to make a very, very belated New Year's resolution (maybe an April Fool's Day resolution? That makes no sense) to use my cookbooks more, and decided to try another recipe from my Williams-Sonoma cookbook - with my own little spin, of course - chicken breasts with whole-grain mustard sauce. The result was juicy, tender chicken with a pleasantly piquant and creamy sauce that's versatile enough to use on the protein of your choice.

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the chicken & mustard sauce:

3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

1 cup all-purpose flour

Salt and freshly ground pepper

2 tbsp. unsalted butter

2 tbsp. vegetable oil

1 shallot, finely minced

1/2 cup dry white wine

3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

3 tbsp. whole-grain mustard

I'm not a huge chicken breast fan. I usually prefer dark meat, as I think it's more flavorful, and doesn't dry out as quickly. But there is one way that I love making chicken breasts: pounding them thin, coating them with flour, then pan-frying them in a combination of butter and oil (the original calls for sauteeing the chicken, unbreaded, but that is not how I do). The flour coating and the quick cook time seals the juices in the meat and virtually guarantees you moist, tender chicken.

First, I placed each breast in a plastic bag and pounded it until it was about 1/4-1/2 inch thick. The important thing is to make sure that the meat is pounded to a consistent thickness, so that it cooks evenly. That being said, the thinner you pound the meat, the quicker it cooks. I ended up cutting each piece in half to better fit in the pan.

Next, I put the flour in a container with a generous helping of salt and pepper (maybe a couple of tsp. each) and dredged each piece of chicken in the mixture.

I heated the butter and oil together in the pan over medium high heat.

Once the foam subsided, I added the chicken, cooking about 4-5 minutes per side (until golden brown and cooked through).

I removed the chicken to a plate and covered it with foil. Then I started on the mustard sauce.

I returned the pan to medium heat and added the minced shallots, cooking them until softened, about 3-4 minutes.

I added the wine and whisked, making sure to get all the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. I simmered until the wine had reduced down to about 3 tbsp., about 5 minutes.

I stirred in the cream and seasoned with salt and pepper. Then I brought the mixture to a boil and cooked about 3-4 minutes, whisking constantly, until the sauce was sufficiently thickened. I also threw in about a tsp. of flour to help out (with the thickening).

Finally, I removed the pan from the heat and whisked in the mustard until the sauce was smooth.

I served this with some leftover mashed potatoes. While my first chicken recipe from this cookbook didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, the easy-peasy and deliciously tangy mustard sauce more than made up for it - I can see serving this with any number of things, fish, pork, steak, vegetables... Mark, who claimed he wasn't that hungry when he showed up for dinner, begged for a second helping. The Great Cookbook Experiment of 2010 is off to a great start!

Firefly

2010-03-31T10:18:00.007-04:00

*Team post by Angela and Mark.

Due to fate, magic, or some other unknown force, there are a handful of restaurants in the District at which we've attempted to eat multiple times, but something always comes up, e.g., one of us gets sick, friends make last minute plans to hang out, we get sucked into the vortex that is watching (or rewatching, on my part) episodes of The Wire...We finally made it to one of these places this weekend, Firefly, located adjacent to the Hotel Madera on New Hampshire Avenue, just off Dupont Circle. Normally, Mark and I are pretty much on the same page about a place, but in this instance, we had very differing opinions, particularly about the decor (he didn't like it, I did). That being said, I think it was a fun place for a bigger party (we had 6, with my out-of-town guests), the service was friendly and efficient, and the food (with just a couple of missteps) was tasty and well-executed. And I always appreciate a restaurant that commits to using products from local farms and farmers. I wouldn't mind visiting this cozy restaurant for a laid-back dinner in the future.

Click below to see what we ate!

Mark's thoughts on the decor:

The decor seems to suggest that they ran out of money halfway through the job. The main dining area boasts a floor-to-ceiling 'firefly tree' hung with lights and lanterns and the walls are lined with birch. The 'intimate' and 'rustic' dining room is highlighted by a faux-plastic stone wall with all the authenticity you might find eating in a Parisian cafe... in Epcot center.

When we were led into the 'lounge' area the decor was far more half-assed. Rather than having built a wall, the rooms were separated by essentially what appeared to be a large shower curtain. A large coat rack hung from the wall directly over our table, indicating that perhaps one of the two didn't belong; the table or the coat rack. In college, I spent a year in a makeshift room in an attic which was no more than a small, grubby space partitioned off by a shower curtain. Thankfully, Firefly didn't share Collegiate Mark's culinary taste (Easy Mac and fake mashed potatoes anyone?) as well.

When our server soon arrived and warmly greeted us, his accent was thick, but he was enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the menu. He told us about the evening's features and nicely highlighted some dishes for the table (though I always scratch my chin when the server highlights the three most expensive entrees on the menu). When he left, we were all salivating over which options to try.

Angela's thoughts on the decor and food:

I really liked the atmosphere at Firefly. I actually thought it did feel intimate, and had kind of the perfect atmosphere for a neighborhood joint. For me, it felt comfortable, unpretentious, and whimsical, qualities I thought were also reflected in the dishes. I even liked the firefly tree.*

I started with the salt-roasted baby beets, with Maryland goat cheese, Sicilian pistachios, micro arugula, and fig vinegar, and was very pleased with it. The beets were really tender, with a much more subtle saltiness than I would have expected from something "salt-roasted." The pistachios lent a nice textural contrast, and the arugula, dressed lightly with the sweet and sharp fig vinegar added brightness and needed acidity.

Salt-Roasted Baby Beets

Mark ordered the deviled eggs, with smoked paprika, dried capers, and garlic chips. He liked their ambition, adding unexpected flavors and textures to the classic dish, but thought there could've been many better directions to go instead of the paprika; combined with the garlic chip, he said he couldn't help but envision BBQ Pringles with every bite.

Deviled Eggs

There were many other dishes ordered by the table, but I didn't feel like making others wait to eat while I snapped photos of their food. One offering that I will mention (because I loved it so much and would come back for the sole purpose of ordering it again) is the crawfish and sunchoke dip, served with a crusty baguette. I'm not sure if the creaminess came from actual cream or from pureeing the sunchokes, but whatever it was, it was velvety rich. And nestled in that creamy goodness were chunks of perfectly cooked crawfish, plump, juicy and flavorful (sorry about the photo - the light from the firefly tree did not quite make it over to the table).

Crawfish and Sunchoke Dip

I ordered the pan roasted halibut with green garbanzo bean puree, fiddlehead ferns, turnips, and fingerling potatotes. The plating and colors were just gorgeous, the halibut was perfectly cooked (flaky, yet firm) and seasoned, and the puree was lusciously smooth and flavorful. Unfortunately, the turnips and potatoes were really undercooked - I needed a knife to cut into them! Some of my guests, having ordered the same dish, must have felt the same way. At the end of the meal, I glanced across the table to see a few plates completely polished clean except for the untouched, rock-hard potatoes.

Pan-Roasted Halibut

Mark ordered the mini pot roast, with Yukon gold potatoes, braised baby carrots, and roasted shallot jus. He enjoyed the hearty dish, as the meat was really tender. What was surprising was how much he loved the carrots - usually he's not a big carrot fan, but the braising had left the vegetable with soft and buttery texture.

Mini Pot Roast

I'll hand it back over to Mark for the dessert.

Chocolate peanut butter sandwich? It sounds almost impossible to mess up, but such was the case. Texture just might be the most important component of a dessert to me. I love when you can mix gooey and crisp and crunchy into one dish. The potential was certainly there for this layered dessert to touch upon each of those textures, but unfortunately the peanut butter ice cream and chocolate sandwich both had the same nondescript, frozen taste. It seemed like it had been sitting in a freezer long enough to meld into one icy, unappetizing square. Such a shame to sully the good names of Peanut Butter and Chocolate.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Sandwich

Bad ending aside, we left Firefly stuffed and content. Luckily, the service and overall quality of the food proved a lot more genuine than the (debatably) tacky interiors.

*Zombies (or ogres or demons or bad witches) would never attack you in a place with a [potentially] magic firefly tree. You'd still have to look out for pirates or ninjas, though.

Eatonville

2010-03-30T07:58:00.003-04:00

*Post by Angela.
On our way to yet another show at 9:30, Mark and I strolled around the U Street area and found ourselves at Eatonville, on the corner of 14th and V. The restaurant, touting Southern cuisine, is named after the first incorporated all African-American town in the country, and the colorful decor is meant to be an ode to Eatonville's most famous resident, writer Zora Neale Hurston. We had a really fantastic experience here, with great drinks, friendly service, and really good and hearty dishes at a great price. I would recommend Eatonville for a fun and delicious dinner in a heartbeat.

Click below to see what we ate!

When we walked into the vast dining room, it was fairly busy but there were still a few open tables. The friendly and welcoming hostess explained that although they were holding the tables for reservations, she would start seating walk-ins if the reservations didn't show up. She invited us to wait at one of the restaurant's two bars, so we headed to the upstairs option to wait.

While waiting, we sampled a couple of Eatonville's fantastic cocktails. Mark got the Sweet Heat, which showcased Tabasco-infused vodka and mango. He loved this drink, which went down sweet and smooth, but finished up with a burst of heat. I ordered the Ramos gin fizz, which, thanks to the addition of egg white, was creamy and just the right amount of sweet. After getting enthusiastic recommendations from our very capable and afffable bartender, we decided to go ahead and eat at the bar.

On the left: Sweet Heat; on the right: Ramos Gin Fizz

Mark got the cheddar tart with Vidalia onion, tomato, and white cheddar, with micro-greens and parsley puree to start. We both liked this dish - the crust was flaky and light, and the sweetness of the onion played well with the sharpness of the cheddar and the tartness of the tomato.

Cheddar Tart

I got the fried green tomatoes, with arugula and goat cheese. While the tomatoes were sliced a little tiny bit thick for my liking, the dish was drizzled with a very tasty spicy remoulade which helped, and the arugula lightened it up, too. Mark did note that our starters were sort of similar (both had tomatoes, greens, cheese); even so, we enjoyed both.

Fried Green Tomatoes

For his entree, Mark got the pan-fried pork chop, with wilted spinach, fingerling potatoes, and green tomato chutney. Mark and I thought this dish was solid. The pork was juicy and tender, but I would have liked a little bit more of a crispy crust on the outside. The chutney was a little sweet, but it added a lot of brightness and freshness to the dish.

Pan Fried Pork Chop

I got the crispy chicken breast with garlic mashed potatoes, braised collard greens, and mushroom gravy on the bartender's recommendation. And wow. I owe him. The chicken was absolutely phenomenal, satisfyingly crispy on the outside, juicy, tender, and flavorful on the inside, and the mushroom gravy was the right amount of rich and salty. The accompaniments were just so-so (the greens were a little tough, and the mashed potatoes were a little watery), but given the perfection of the chicken, I wasn't about to complain. Mark seconded my high praise.

Crispy Chicken Breast

We also got a side of the three cheese mac & cheese. I loved the creamy, rich dish, but Mark thought it was so-so. I saw where he was coming from - it was delicious, but there was nothing especially creative or different about it. I didn't mind. I thought it was well-executed and incredibly filling.

3 Cheese Mac & Cheese

In fact, the mac & cheese was so filling that, if you can believe it, we didn't even finish our entrees and completely skipped dessert. That being said, our bartender did note that he was really surprised at how well we did.

We walked out of Eatonville completely stuffed and completely satisfied. While Mark and I can't afford to eat like this all the time (we'd gain a million pounds and have to buy all new clothes), Eatonville's cuisine is perfect as a special treat!

Brunch at Masa 14

2010-03-29T12:10:00.007-04:00

*Team post by Angela and Mark.
I had guests in town this weekend - my sister Pam, my future brother-in-law Jason, and their friend Jessica. and on Saturday, we took advantage of the beautiful weather and took a walk over to Masa 14 for brunch. Mark and I had been there before for dinner, which was a little hit-or-miss both with dishes and service (they do have a really fantastic black cod dish), but we'd heard some pretty good things about brunch. While we hoped for a better experience, unfortunately we were met again with hit-or-miss food, as well as more serious service problems. I hate giving negative reviews, but I think we're just about done with Masa 14 for dining.

Click below to see what we ate!

Mark and Jason both got a Masa breakfast pizza, with house bacon, egg yolks, gruyere cheese, pico de gallo, and arugula. Mark enjoyed the dish, but Jason noted that it was overly onion-y. Sure enough, upon closer inspection, the minced red onion dominated the dish.

Masa Breakfast Pizza

The guys also each ordered sliders. Jason got the blackened tuna club sliders, with house bacon, avocado, confit tomatoes, and arugula. He seemed to like this dish better.

Blackened Tuna Club Sliders

Mark got the Wagyu beef sliders, with chipotle aioli, Bibb lettuce, caramelized onions and goat cheese. He liked them but didn't love them. On the plus side, the meat was well-seasoned and juicy. Mark, though, shockingly felt like goat cheese (We're talking about a guy who wants to invent goat cheese-flavored gum) was the wrong choice, as the mini-sandwiches could have actually benefited more from some contrasting flavors and textures. As it was, the creamy goat cheese didn't do much to stand apart from the caramelized onions or juicy meat. From my bite, I agree with Mark, but I think I enjoyed it a little more than he did.

Wagyu Beef Sliders

Pam got the chilaquiles, with corn tortillas, chorizo, queso cotija (a hard cow's milk cheese), soft scrambled eggs and salsa verde. She was kind of so-so on the dish, giving it a "B-".

Chilaquiles

Jessica got the petite mushroom escabeche omelet (not pictured), with arugula, roasted peppers, and tomato jam, which she didn't seem to love, but didn't hate, either. They split an order of Anson Mill grits, with chipotle pepper, Oaxaca cheese, and green onions, which they declared to be the best dish of the meal.

Anson Mill Grits

I got the grilled chorizo sausage, poached egg, and salsa Mexicana. The sausage was very tasty, and the salsa was full of bright, fresh flavor, but the egg was overcooked (the yolk was pretty firm).

Grilled Chorizo Sausage, Poached Egg and Salsa Mexicana

The service was, I hate to say it, but... not good.

(I'll let Mark take over here, since he actually waits tables for a living, and is often the first to understand what is happening when there are hiccups in service.)

Let me begin by saying that I work in a restaurant with pretty rigorous standards and expectations for service. While I know it's unreasonable to hold other restaurants to these same standards, I do think there are a minimum of things that should be expected at a certain class of restaurant, should I offer my patronage there. Honestly, these are all things that you don't need me to tell you about, because they're very basic principals of good customer service. I know as well as anyone that mistakes happen, but a mistake can almost always be forgiven and forgotten with a sincere commitment to solving the problem and an apology.

The first couple of issues I had with the service would normally be things I'd forgive. But, in retrospect, when larger issues present themselves later in the meal, it's tough not to go back and re-examine all of the kinks. In spite of the restaurant being virtually empty (we almost walked past because it was so empty, we assumed it must be closed) it took nearly ten minutes before any server greeted our table and took a drink order. At that point, we'd already had a solid ten minutes with the menus and we were ready to order food as well as drinks.

Normally, I'm the most sympathetic when it comes to waiting for drinks. Cocktails require waiting for one bartender and sometimes there's a long line of drinks to be made before yours come up. Taking several minutes to return with a round of drinks isn't out of the ordinary and sometimes guests have difficulty understanding this. I was just a little let down that our food started to hit the table a few minutes before our server was able to return with a relatively easy drink order. (Another service standard is that it's tacky for food to hit the table before the guests have anything in front of them to drink. If your drinks are taking a long time, you need to tell the kitchen to slow the food down.)

But, mind you, I said 'started to hit' the table. Our food arrived in spurts over the course of several minutes. Another service standard is that you should be able to have all of the food hit the table in as short of a window is possible. This way, guests aren't left out and everyone can begin to eat before their food turns cold. The first of our food was nearly cold by the time the final dishes were trickling out of the kitchen.

Up to this point the service had been patchy but forgivable, but this is where it fell flat on its face. Halfway through the slow trickle of food hitting the table, out came a mushroom pizza. After passing it around the table a few times without it finding a home, we soon realized that a mushroom omelette must have become a mushroom pizza in the game of 'telephone' between when the order was taken and the food was delivered. A couple of minutes later when the food runner brought the next wave of entrees, we tried to explain to him that we hadn't ordered the mushroom pizza. After he tried to tell us we were wrong, we finally were able to get the order straightened out... or so we could only hope. While we waited for the entree to be made, nobody stopped by the table to apologize or establish any sort of expectations as to when it might come.

Usually, this is where the server swings by the table to realize that one of the diners is missing an entree. "Oh, I'm sorry, I misheard you. I'll have the omelette right out." But this never happened. As the rest of us finally caved in and started picking away at our food, Jessica was left waiting another ten minutes. Once again, that's a forgivable offense... but nobody really seemed to care enough to stop by and explain or apologize. Our server was nowhere to be found. We weren't certain that the right dish would ever even make it to the table. It finally did arrive... without any explanation, any apology or even the simple acknowledgment of some sort of error.

When the food finally arrived, we were lucky that nothing else was wrong because we didn't see anyone until the meal was finished and our server snuck by to refill someone's coffee. I wasn't upset, I just walked out really let down. It was so dead in Masa 14 that afternoon that I would've figured the staff would want to encourage return business. As we walked out, I passed a manager on my way to the restroom. He had been standing out on the floor the entire time, never looking terribly busy, and for everything that went wrong, he (and the server) had the simple means to correct it all by simply walking by. As it stands, I walked out under the impression that the staff didn't care if we ever came back and they have no need to worry...

We won't.

While Masa 14 may be a decent spot for pre-concert drinks (it is a fun space, after all), there are so many other and better options for brunch/dinner along 14th Street and the U Street corridor.

Buffalo Steaks with Peppercorn Sauce and Roasted Potatoes

2010-03-28T10:07:00.004-04:00

*Post by Angela.
The weather last weekend was absolutely gorgeous, so even though I was sick, I took myself over to the Dupont Circle farmers market. I picked up some buffalo ribeyes from Cibola Farms, and the cutest little red potatoes. I've never cooked buffalo before, and wanted to do something special with it, so I found this recipe for marinade and peppercorn sauce. I served it up with some roasted potatoes and a spinach salad (a post for another day), and while I know the photo below looks like a hot mess, it was a delicious and hearty hot mess! Mark and I polished off this dinner in no time at all.

Click below to get the recipes!

List of ingredients for the marinade:
1 can of beer
1/2 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
5 tablespoons fresh lime juice 1 red onion, coarsely chopped
6 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons whole grain mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
1 teaspoon Tabasco brand pepper sauce

The prep for dinner started the night before - I mixed beer, sugar, lime juice, onion, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, oil, ginger and hot pepper sauce in large bowl or storage container. I nestled the steaks in marinade, covered the container and refrigerated it overnight.

List of ingredients for the roasted red potatoes:
2 lbs. read potatoes
2-3 tbsp. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tsp. minced rosemary
1/2 tsp. salt
fresh ground pepper

The next evening, I preheated the oven to 450 degrees, and minced up the garlic and rosemary pretty finely.

I halved the potatoes (or quartered them, if they were bigger), drizzled them with olive oil, added the garlic and rosemary. I tossed everything thoroughly to make sure all the potatoes were covered and the rosemary and garlic were evenly distributed.

I spread the potatoes in one layer on a baking sheet, seasoned with salt and pepper, and baked them for about 35 minutes (until tender).

List of ingredients for the peppercorn sauce:

1/2 cup white wine
2 shallots, finely chopped
1 tablespoons coarse ground black pepper

21/2 Cups water

2 tsp. chicken stock granules
2 heaped tsp. cornflour
1/2 cup whipping cream

While the potatoes were in the oven, I minced up a heap of shallots.

I added the shallots to a saucepan with the wine and the pepper, brought the mixture to boil, then reduced the heat and simmered until mixture was reduced by half, about 5 minutes.

I added the water and the chicken stock granules, and simmered until the sauce reduced again by half. I mixed a little water with the cornflour, added it to the sauce, then stirred until mixture thickened I added the cream, stirred, and cooked until heated through.

Finally, I took the steak out of the fridge and shook off the marinade. I melted about a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil in my grill pan, and cooked the steaks until nice and browned on both sides, and medium rare in the center (about 6-7 minutes a side).

The potatoes, simple as they were, were really tasty. I enjoyed the buffalo as well - I thought the meat was slightly sweeter but just as tender as beef ribeye, and the marinade gave the already flavorful steak a subtle boost. Given the lower fat content of the buffalo, I may take myself over to the farmers market again today for Buffalo Ribeye 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Creme Cafe and Lounge

2010-03-25T15:24:00.002-04:00

*Post by Angela.
We were on our way to a concert at the 9:30 Club the other night, and decided to stop by Creme Cafe and Lounge on U Street. I'd heard a couple of good things about Creme's brunch, but not much else. And even though it played a part in our decision to walk in, it made me a little nervous that Creme had a lot of empty tables when every other restaurant on the strip that we had passed was packed. Nevertheless, otherwise paralyzed by the number of U Street options, we decided to give it a shot - and were pleasantly surprised.

Click below to see what we ate!

I really like the space at Creme - the minimalist decor and exposed ceilings are appropriately chic for the restaurant's U Street location. Our server for the night was really warm and friendly, which more than made up for the occasional lag times during dinner.

The meal began with a really nice touch, a white bean spread with the complimentary bread. I've said this before, but I love it when a restaurant gives me something different from the typical bread and butter combo. And my love for white bean spread has already been documented on this blog. Creme's version, while not quite as good as my version (of course), was very good, nicely salty and creamy.

Complimentary bread with white bean spread

For our starter, we went light, sharing the Bibb salad with toasted walnuts, buttermilk blue cheese and walnut vinaigrette. The salad was fine, nothing special, although I liked the very pungent and creamy blue cheese a lot. The walnut vinaigrette, though, barely registered against the strong flavor of the Bibb lettuce.

Bibb salad with toasted walnuts, buttermilk blue cheese and walnut vinaigrette

For my entree, I went with the diver scallops with shaved buttered Brussels sprouts, tomato compote and citrus reduction. Both Mark and I thought the scallops were perfectly cooked, buttery with just the slightest firmness. They were a tiny bit too salty for my liking, but the imperfect seasoning of the scallop was balanced out when taken in a bite with the tender shaved Brussels sprouts and tangy tomato compote. And the citrus sauce brightened the whole dish.

Diver scallops with shaved buttered Brussels sprouts, tomato compote and citrus reduction

Mark went with the vegetarian option on the menu, a roasted garlic and tomato ravioli with wilted greens and lemon butter. Both of us thought the ravioli wrapper was a little too thick, but Mark noted that if anything could balance that out, it was the zesty lemon butter sauce. He was surprised at how well the dish worked, despite its simplicity.

Roasted garlic and tomato ravioli with wilted greens and lemon butter

I wasn't at the table when Mark ordered dessert, but he got some sort of chocolate torte. The torte had layers of different kinds of chocolate (with panels of white chocolate surrounding it), and had a cookie-type crust on the bottom. I had a bite, and it was a little too rich for me, but Mark really enjoyed it.

Some sort of chocolate torte

Neither of us had any expectations for Creme, and maybe because of that, we walked away pretty satisfied. While there wasn't anything particularly exciting about anything we ate, and each dish had its flaws, everything was solid, and our server was a sweetheart. There are other restaurants on the U Street strip that I prefer (Tabaq and Marvin spring to mind), but Creme Cafe is a pretty good option if those other places are packed.

Rogue States Burgers

2010-03-24T19:25:00.003-04:00

*Post by Mark.
Just when we were all set to crown BGR the best new burger in the circle, Rogue States has to go and get all Kanye on their acceptance speech. As a statement of fact, I've had BGR twice. I've relatively enjoyed my experiences and plan to go back. I'd also like to note that all DC burger debates should start and end with Ray's Hell Burger across the river. It's the unrivaled champion in the DMV area (though as a disclaimer, former Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn's Good Stuff Eatery is still an unchecked box on my to-do list). Unfortunately, this doesn't tell the whole story... Places like BGR have been adding a little gourmet flair to the District's improving burger scene, but with just a few good-but-not-great options, DC is left a couple fries shy of a combo meal.

Can Rogue States help Ray's push DC to the next level? Click below to see!

Rogue States sets out to be 'a rogue member of the fast food industry, serving great artisan food in an undeniably chic environment.' In addition to being chic, the environment also hosts a ton of space for seating. Beyond the counters is a large back room that makes finding seating a cinch anytime of the day.

The ordering process is streamlined. The menu gives you several styles of burger to choose from (like the "Curried Away" or the "Now and Zen" but only two temperature choices are offered: "Pink" or "No Pink". Free toppings include lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion (raw or grilled). For a dollar extra you can add an array of cheeses, applewood smoked bacon, wild mushrooms or grilled peppers.

Another appreciated touch is the four different types of mayo offered: regular, wasabi, Old Bay, and chipotle. Dip your fries in them or add them to your burgers... my favorite dipper was the chipotle.

Clockwise from top left: Wasabi, chipotle, Old Bay, and regular mayo

To accompany your burger, you have the option for regular or sweet potato fries. We found each to be a bold entry at opposite ends of the spectrum. While the sweet potato fries were spot-on perfect, the regular fries were overly thick and starchy. I'm aware that the two varieties are probably concocted with the same technique, but it is one that lends itself more favorably to the sweet potato fries.

Regular fries on the right, sweet potato fries on the left, plus wrapped burger

For my burger selection, I chose the "Square One" burger which is made with sea salt and fresh black pepper. To top it off, I added lettuce, tomato, grilled onion, cheddar cheese and applewood smoked bacon. My add-ons were all fresh and my burger was really juicy. I ordered it 'pink' which I'd guess was somewhere between Medium-Rare and Medium. The quality of the beef was evident in each bite and I could really taste the unique flavors the sea salt and black pepper added. All of the ingredients came sandwiched between a hefty brioche bun.

"Pardon My French" burger on the right, "Square One" burger on the left

Angela went for a French twist on the American classic, ordering the "Pardon My French" burger with black truffle oil and thyme. She added some lettuce, tomato, and brie. Like me, she was impressed with the specific flavors (truffle oil and thyme) that Rogue States brought to the burger. She wished she'd have ordered some sharper cheese, though, as the creamy brie disappeared into the hearty sandwich by the time it hit her mouth. Her main complaint, which I would gently second, was that the thick, plain bun was a little overpowering. I didn't think it was as big of a problem, because my burger came with a few extra elements like grilled onions and the applewood bacon that helped create a little balance in mine. But I did feel like the bun added more to the burger's aesthetics than it did its taste.

Cross-section of the "Pardon My French" burger

In spite of some over-breading flaws, I was mostly impressed by Rogue States. Does it help put DC on the map as a major burger destination? No. But it will give BGR a good run for its money in Dupont Circle. While they're pretty comparable, I'd have to split hairs to tell you which I prefer. Let's put it this way, if I had to eat a burger every day of the week from only these two places. I'd eat four burgers from Rogue States and three from BGR.

The Quest for the Ghost[face] Peppa

2010-03-24T09:36:00.014-04:00

*Guest post by Calypso.

Well, Angela has made it clear to me that if I want to keep creeping around food blogger happy hours on her coat-tails, I had to write something. I could blog about my own culinary experience, but most of my recipes have two ingredients, both of them leftovers, and a decent amount of hot sauce. That said, "Pepperoni pizza stuffed with kung pao chicken" was a great idea (for more information on the difference between "idea" and "actual dish", check out your local library!). My restaurant reviews would mostly be limited to American Pizza (around the corner from my house) and Tsim Yung (a few blocks away). So, instead I'm going to document my "training" for a very exciting dish, which I will be cooking, blogging, tweeting, and most likely regretting all within the next few weeks: Satan's Ashes curry (at the time of posting, that link had no photos because of bandwidth issues, hopefully you can pull up the google cache, as the images are priceless).

Satan's Ashes is touted as the world's hottest curry, largely due to the use of the "Bhut Jolokia" pepper (which is like saying ATM machine, as Jolokia means pepper....sorry to all our Assamese speakers). The Bhut Jolokia, often called the "ghost pepper," rates in at (a world record) million scoville units, which I believe is a measurement of how many kittens could be incapacitated with a single pepper. The same pepper is used in many spicy food challenges, usually to the dismay of Adam Richman. On the plus side, in India the Bhut Jolokia has recently been approved for use as an ingredient. Well, an ingredient in grenades used against insurgents. So, at worst, it's like eating a grenade. So tell Angela to stop worrying.

I ordered the curry spice packet a week ago, but supposedly they're out-of-stock for a few weeks, and they're shipping from Britain, so I have time to "train," which means revisiting the spiciest dishes I can get in DC. Last night was my first night out, and I went to long-time favorite: Spices in Cleveland Park, home of "suicide curry."

Spices' suicide curry, which alone bears the warning "Very spicy" right there next to its title in the menu, is a Thai-style curry. The chicken (or beef or pork, if you haven't been brainwashed by Chik Fil-A commercials) is simmered in coconut milk with "extra large amounts of spices, onions, and chili." The first time I ordered this dish, probably 7 years ago, I ordered it as is on the menu, and it was a good, pleasant spicy. Ever since, I've ordered it "extra extra spicy, as spicy as you can make it" and I've rarely been disappointed.

The curry itself is very tasty, though there's nothing especially new here. If you enjoy coconut milk curries, then you'll like the simple flavors (it really is just broth, chicken, and onion). As far as spice goes, you can see the red specks all over the place in the photo, which should already have you salivating. The chicken doesn't absorb much of the spice, but the curry is thick enough to use the chicken pieces to scoop up decent amounts. Of course, that means I'm using chopsticks to pick up chicken, curl it into a spoon shape, and then use my chopstick-chicken-spoon to eat spicy curry soup. Yeah, that hurt my head as well. There's enough sauce in the dish to completely drench the white rice and then another bowl of the stuff after, while still liberally saucing up each piece of chicken. All in all, the dish was a very tasty, though not especially imaginative, curry. This, to me, is comfort food, and I'll never complain about portion size here. As far as spiciness, I think I'm getting jaded, because I barely broke a sweat eating the whole thing, but it was hot enough to promote pauses between bites. So, in my completely arbitrary and probably use-once-and-dispose rating system:

Taste (from 1 to 10): 8 (Very yummy but not exactly palate-challenging)

Price (from Wimpy to Scrooge McDuck): Somewhere between Snorks and Thundercats. By the way, did you know that James Lipton composed the theme to Thundercats? Yeah, the Actor's Studio guy. Seriously, check imdb! Okay, fine, it was around $10 for the very generous entree and around $6 for the huge can of Sapporo. mmmmm....

Spiciness (from 1, a spicy chili con carne, to 10, which is the horror-that-shall-not-be-named-or-even-imagined-but-it-rhymes-with-"most leper"-and-it's-mentioned-at-the-top-of-this-post): About a 4, I barely broke a forehead sweat and never needed water/milk, but I did take the occasional pause between bites.

Curried Chicken Salad

2010-03-23T17:00:00.003-04:00

*Post by Angela.
When Mark lived in Chicago, his favorite restaurant was a tapas place called Cafe Ba Ba Reeba, and his favorite dish there was the chicken & curry salad. Now, I don't know much about chicken salad. It was definitely not something we ate at my house growing up, and I've probably eaten it less than a dozen times as an adult. But I've liked the chicken salad that I have eaten, and I'm intrigued by the combination of flavors and textures. I've tried making curried chicken salad once in the past, and it turned out okay, but not great.

Because I'm the best girlfriend in the entire world (and because I felt like chicken salad had the kind of consistency that might not offend my very sensitive throat), I had the urge to give it another go with a recipe from Dave Lieberman, the man responsible for my very successful cauliflower soup last week. The recipe is pretty darned simple, and result was much better this time around, like a piñata full of yummy flavors and textures in your mouth - I'm starting to think that this Dave Lieberman character might deserve a place on my Food Network all-stars list (along with Tyler Florence and Giada De Laurentiis).

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the curried chicken salad:

4 whole chicken thighs

1 lemon

1/2 bunch cilantro leaves, chopped

1/2 bunch cilantro stems

kosher salt & black pepper

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 tsp. curry powder

1 tsp. honey

1 tsp. lemon juice

3 green onions, very finely minced

2 stalks celery, thinly sliced

1 cup seedless red grapes, quartered

Bread of your choice (I used whole wheat)

First, I prepped the cilantro, separating the leaves from the stems and giving them a rough chop. I'm not sure why it's important to do this, but whenever a recipe specifies something weird, and I have no idea why, I default to following directions (as long as it's not a pain in the ass).

I also quartered a lemon, removing the visible seeds.

I threw the chicken, lemon, cilantro leaves and stems into a saucepan, and added just enough water to cover the chicken. I then added salt and pepper (a couple of tsp. of each), brought the water to a boil over medium heat, then reduced to a very gentle simmer. I then went back to catching up on last week's Human Target (What?! That Mark Valley is so dreamy. And it's got Rorschach!).

After about 45 minutes (when the chicken was falling-off-the-bone tender), I scooped the chicken out of the saucepan, let it cool, then stripped the meat off the bones, throwing away the skin. I used a fork to shred the remaining meat.

In a bowl, I mixed together the mayonnaise, curry, honey, and lemon juice. Once all those ingredients were combined, I gently stirred in the green onions, celery, grapes, and chicken, and seasoned to taste.

I toasted a couple of pieces of whole wheat bread, and spread the chicken salad pretty thick. I liked it a lot, but next time, I might throw in some chopped jalapeno for some heat and more crunch. And even though it wasn't quite up to Ba Ba Reeba standards, Mark loved it. I'm definitely keeping this recipe in the rotation for lunch options.

Tomato Soup with Roasted Garlic and Herbs

2010-03-22T22:35:00.001-04:00

Due to the continued swelling of my throat, I'm kind of relegated to soups only for the next couple of days. But I didn't want just any soup. I needed a special soup, a magical soup, a soup that could banish the grossness of being sick...at least for a little while. That's where this recipe from seriouseats comes in. I love it so much it makes me want to cry hot tears of joy. The fire-roasted tomatoes and the roasted garlic make the soup explode with flavor, and every time I finish eating a bowl, I immediately want another. Plus, it's really low calorie and relatively cheap! I'd even go so far as to say it's my favorite tomato soup recipe of all-time (okay, or maybe this one, but it's really close).

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the soup:
1 tbsp olive oil, plus a little for drizzling on the garlic
1 large onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
1 28-oz can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
1 28-oz can fire-roasted crushed tomatoes
3 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth for a vegetarian option)
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. dried basil
1/2 tsp. cayenne
1 head of garlic
2 tbsp. fresh parsley, minced
salt & pepper
1 tbsp. sugar
Plain yogurt for topping the soup

First, I prepared the most important component of the soup (to me, at least), the roasted garlic. Roasted garlic is the most wonderful thing in the world - some nights I will roast up a head (or two) of garlic just to spread on crusty bread for a snack. It's pretty easy to make, too. Step one: I preheated the oven to 400 degrees, and peeled away the outer husk of one big head of garlic (so that each individual clove keeps its skin).

Then I sliced off the very top of the head of garlic, so that cloves are exposed.

I drizzled the head of garlic in a little olive oil, rubbing the oil all over, and sprinkled with just a touch of kosher salt.

I wrapped the garlic in foil and threw it in the oven for about 45 minutes, until the garlic cloves were nice and soft. Finally, I took the foil ball out of the oven, unwrapped the garlic, let it cool slightly, and then just gently squeezed the cloves out of the remaining husk.

Now onto the rest of the soup!

First, I sautéed the onion and celery in olive oil in a pot over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until the onion was translucent and soft.

Next, I added both cans of tomatoes, the broth, oregano, basil, and cayenne. I brought the pot to a boil, then reduced the heat and simmered.

After about 10 minutes, I added the beautiful roasted garlic cloves, removed the pot from the heat and puréed the soup with my immersion blender until smooth.

I put the pot back on low heat, added the minced parsley, seasoned to taste, and simmered another 10 minutes. I then added about 1 tbsp. of sugar (to cut the acidity of the tomatoes).

I served this soup with a dollop of plain yogurt. I wanted to eat it with crusty bread, but my poor aching throat was just not having it. No matter, the soup itself was filling enough. Hopefully by the time I finish off this batch, I'll be back to eating solids again like a normal person.

Cioppino

2010-03-21T10:30:00.003-04:00

So I thought I was getting better, but I was wrong. Yesterday, my cough decided to mutate, turning into some sort of infection - my throat is currently swollen up so much (think X-Men villain Mojo) that it's hard to swallow. I spent the day lounging the house, hanging out with my friend Nick (Calypso to those who have met him at Food Blogger happy hours). Given my pitiful state, I decided to try to cheer myself up by making cioppino, a fish stew for which San Francisco is famous. The rich broth of the cioppino soothed my throat and made my stomach very happy. I also now have enough leftovers to feed myself for a few days without having to leave the house, so I don't have to change out of my pajamas anytime in the immediate future.

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the cioppino:

3 tbsp. olive oil

1 large fennel bulb, thinly sliced

1 onion, chopped

3 large shallots, chopped

2 tsp. salt

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

1/2 cup tomato paste

1 28-oz can diced tomatoes in juice

1 1/2 cups dry white wine

5 cups seafood stock

1 bay leaf

1 lb. mussels, scrubbed and debearded

1 lb. uncooked large shrimp

1 1/2 lb. halibut

First, I prepped the vegetables. Using my mandoline, I sliced up the fennel relatively thin.

I also chopped up (pretty finely) the onion and the shallot. The use of two different kind of onions confused me the first time I made this recipe, but, along with the mellowed licorice taste from the fennel, it adds a depth of flavor I don't find in other cioppino recipes. That Giada really knows her stuff!

I heated the oil in a very large pot over medium heat, then added the fennel, onion, shallots, and salt and sauteed until the onion was translucent, about 10 minutes.

I threw in the garlic and red pepper flakes, and sauteed 2 minutes. I doubled the amount of red pepper flakes, because I like a little heat in the broth.

Next, I added the tomato paste. Again, I used twice as much as the recipe calls for, because I wanted the broth very thick. I added the diced tomatoes (juices and all), wine, fish stock and bay leaf, covered and brought to a simmer, and cooked about 40 minutes.

I then added the mussels, covered and cooked until the mussels began to open, about 5 minutes.

In the meanwhile, I prepped the rest of the seafood. I cut the halibut (one of my favorite kinds of fish) into big hearty chunks. You could use any type of white fish, but I like halibut because it's firm enough to hold together in the stew.

I also peeled and deveined the shrimp. To devein shrimp, I just ran my knife along the back of each shrimp, exposing the black vein (it's really the gastrointestinal tract of the shrimp), which I then pulled out.

I added the shrimp and halibut to the stew and simmered about 5 minutes longer, just until the seafood became opaque.

I seasoned the soup, to taste, and served with some crusty French bread. While I usually make this stew in the winter, it was exactly what my poor, sick-ravaged body needed. And the stew tastes even better the next day, when the flavors have really had a chance to meld. I'm still feeling sick, but at least I have this cioppino to look forward to eating tonight!

Bistrot du Coin

2010-03-18T23:55:00.011-04:00

Mark and I continued our tour of rarely-eaten (by us!) European cuisine tonight with a trip to Bistrot du Coin, located just off Dupont Circle at 1738 Connecticut. I'd always read and heard great things about this place, including raves from one of my favorite D.C. blogs, The Bitten Word, but because neither Mark nor I typically ever crave French food, it'd gone by the wayside. Somehow, though, the beautiful weather put me in the mood for some French bistro food, and Bistrot du Coin fit the bill perfectly. The food was all very good (with a couple of stand-outs), the service was friendly and attentive, and the atmosphere was warm and welcoming. Another great neighborhood find!

Click below to see what we ate!

Every time I've ever walked by Bistrot du Coin, it has been absolutely packed, so we headed there early, around 6 - we also had to get back in time for the ill-fated (for me) NCAA match up between Georgetown and Ohio University at 7:25. While most of the restaurant stood empty, we were seated in the cozy little corner by the window.

After perusing the humongous menu for several minutes, Mark settled on the Salade de chèvre chaud, a warm goat cheese salad with walnuts. The goat cheese was beautifully flavored with rosemary and thyme, and melted atop a thick slice of crusty, chewy brown bread.

Salade de chèvre chaud

I went fancier, ordering the Foie gras frais poele, risotto de sorgo truffe, sauteed foie gras with barley risotto and truffle sauce. I rarely ever order foie gras, but as soon as I saw this dish I had to get it, as I've been loving me some barley risotto lately. The dish was as decadent and delicious as you can get - the foie gras, seared so that it had a nice thin crust on the outside and drizzled with truffle sauce, dissolved on my tongue in a rich cloud of flavor. I love barley risotto, and this was a really great example of why - the firm bite of the barley really stood up well to the thick, creamy sauce.

Foie gras frais poele, risotto de sorgo truffe

For his entree, Mark got the Entrecote Grillée, Sauce Béarnaise, the grilled rib-eye with french fries and Béarnaise sauce. He thought the steak was solid, but nothing outstanding, and really liked the creamy Béarnaise. He also enjoyed the fries, noting that they were nice and crispy, and not overly greasy.

Entrecote Grillée, Sauce Béarnaise

Wanting something a little more rustic, I got the Tripes à la mode de Caen, beef tripe stew with white wine, herbs, celery and carrots. I grew up eating this delicacy, and get a little thrill whenever I see it on a menu. Bistrot du Coin prepared its tripe very well, cooking it until tender, yet still a little chewy, and enveloping it in a hearty, well-salted and flavorful stew. The vegetables were cooked perfectly, too - soft, yet avoiding mushiness. I ate every last morsel and used the complimentary crusty bread to sop up the remaining savory liquid.

Tripes à la mode de Caen

Finally we ordered 2 desserts, first of which was the a chestnut mousse, with candied hazelnuts. This dish was right up my alley, with the creamy mousse just the slightest bit sweet (most of the sweetness came from the hazelnuts on top).

Chestnut mousse with candied hazelnuts

We also ordered the "La Tropezienne," brioche with custard, orange blossom and a light custard sauce. The custard was really yummy and very reminiscent of a Creamsicle (in a good way!). I thought the proportion of custard to brioche was a little off (too much bread) but I still really enjoyed it, and Mark did, too.

La Tropezienne

I can definitely see why Bistrot du Coin is such a favorite - it offers really solid food at good prices, in a comforting and unassuming atmosphere. I regret that I didn't have room to try one of the really tempting varieties of mussels, but not to worry - it's in my neighborhood, so I think a return trip at some point in the near future is a no-brainer.

Irish Soda Bread, Colcannon, and Corned Beef

2010-03-18T09:49:00.014-04:00

*Team post by Angela and Mark.
I started out kidding, a little.

Me: "Hey, babe, whaddya say to corned beef and cabbage on St. Paddy's Day?"

Mark: "I'm pretty sure that's not actually traditional Irish food. I think it's more Irish-American. I think we can do better than that. Also, since I'm actually the Irish one... maybe I should try to make something?"

Me: "...I'm okay with that."

A day later, and the menu for St. Patrick's Day dinner had gone from, "let's maybe cook something Irish-y" to Irish soda bread (by Mark), corned beef (by me, because I love me some corned beef regardless of its origins), and colcannon, a traditional Irish dish made with potatoes, cabbage (or kale), and ham (or Irish bacon). I've never made any sort of Irish dish before, so I turned to two of my trustiest culinary guides: for the corned beef, Elise at simplyrecipes.com, and for the colcannon, Tyler Florence (while I'm not sure Mr. Florence is Irish, I've never had a "Tyler's Ultimates" recipe let me down). While the corned beef turned out pretty dry, I was really pleased with my first attempt at colcannon. And Mark's bread was the star of the meal - I'm really starting to think he should take over the cooking...

Click below to get the recipes!

Let's start with the simplest thing first.

List of ingredients for the corned beef:
3 lbs. corned beef
1/4 cup sweet hot mustard
2 tbsp. brown sugar

All I did was remove the corned beef from its packaging, place it on a large piece of foil, fat-side up, slather it with about the mustard, sprinkle it with the brown sugar and bake it for 2 hours at 350 degrees (Mark actually put the beef in the oven for me while I was at work).

After the 2 hours was up, I unwrapped the meat and put it under the broiler for about 3 minutes, let it rest for an additional 10 minutes, then sliced it on a diagonal.

I really love this salty meat because it keeps good for a really long time and you can do so many different things with it (turn it into hash, make it into sandwiches...okay, so you can do two things with it), but cooking it this way yielded some kind of dry, overcooked meat. Simplyrecipes.com gives two options, baked and boiled, and next time, I'll try the boiled version (or another version altogether), or cook the meat at a lower temperature for a shorter amount of time.

List of ingredients for the Colcannon:
1 lb. ham
3 lbs. golden potatotes, scrubbed
2 sticks butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 1/4 cups hot milk
Freshly ground black pepper
1 head cabbage
4 green onions, finely chopped
Salt, to taste

I actually started this dish the day before, boiling the ham in unsalted water for 45 minutes, then draining and chopping it up into little pieces. I'm not exactly sure why you need to cook the ham first, but far be it from me to question Tyler Florence. Especially when it comes to Irish cuisine, which I know nothing about.

The next day, I started prepping by scrubbing the potatoes and putting them in my handy steamer for about 50 minutes, or until soft.

In the meantime, I cored and chopped the cabbage.

The original recipe calls for boiling the cabbage in unsalted water with a couple of tbsp. butter, and I know I just said I wasn't going to question Tyler Florence...but that sounded suspect to me. Instead, on Mark's recommendation, I sauteed the cabbage with 4 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of olive oil in a large pot over medium low heat until tender (but with a little bite still left), about 15 minutes.

I also finely chopped up some green onions.

Once the potatoes were fork tender, I removed them from the steamer. Using a kitchen towel so as not to burn myself, I peeled the potatoes (just using a fork and my fingers), placed them in a bowl and mashed them until the lumps were mostly gone. I then added 1 stick (!) of butter in pieces. Once the butter was incorporated, I microwaved the milk (until hot, not boiling) and gradually poured it into the potatoes while mashing. It'll look a little soupy at first, but don't worry - just keep mashing and all of a sudden you'll have a nice creamy consistency.

I seasoned the potatoes with a lot of freshly ground pepper and salt, then gently stirred in the ham, cabbage and finely chopped green onions.

I topped each serving of colcannon with a pat of butter (it says so in the directions, I swear!). I was a little skeptical of this dish, but it was delicious and heartier than your typical mashed potatoes. The cabbage gave it a very subtle sweetness and some crunch, the ham brought the salty, and the green onion freshened and brightened up the whole butter-laden dish. Even though we ate a lot, we have tons leftover, and I'm looking forward to attempting some fried colcannon patties today...

I'm going to kick it to Mark for the rest of the post, so he can talk about his all-star bread-making turn:

What I really wanted to do for St. Paddy's was make a memorable dish that recreated some of the delicious foods I remembered eating while in Ireland a few years ago. The biggest one to stand out in my mind was the blood sausage. Maybe just because it has a name that makes most people shudder. In reality, Irish blood sausage is pretty incredible and honestly... you've eaten far grosser things. Since making sausage may be a little out of my league, I decided to make another memorable classic: the traditional Irish Soda Bread.

List of ingredients for the Irish Soda Bread:
3 1/3 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. wheat germ (available at Whole Foods)
2 tsp. rolled oats, plus 2 tsp. for sprinkling
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp. canola oil
1/2 quart (2 cups) buttermilk

First, pre-heat your oven to 375 and combine all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

Then add all of the liquid ingredients and stir them together. You don't want to spend too much time doing this.

Get in and get out. After a minute or so, you should start to form a cohesive glob, which you can transfer to a flat surface. Powder your hands up with flour and roll the glob into a big ball.

Then you'll take that last bit of oats and sprinkle them over the top of your bread to give it a nice little professional touch.

Oh, and when you're done, the most important part is to cut an 'X' into the bread. Not only does this ward off the devil, it also has been known to ward off these little guys.

Now you're good and ready to fire the bread into the oven. I put it on a middle rack and baked it on 375 for about 50 minutes.

When you're finished, the bread is going to feel somewhat hard on the outside. If you give it a little knock, you might even hear a hollow sound. Now, all that's left to do is slice that bad boy open and enjoy it with a little butter and you're about 7 Smithwicks and a shot of Jameson away from being a true Irishman.

Silky Cauliflower Soup

2010-03-15T21:29:00.002-04:00

Today I'm still recovering from being sick, so my stomach is a little unsure of itself. For dinner, I really just wanted soup, and a light soup at that. And nothing that would take forever to make. Dave Lieberman had the perfect cure for me, a recipe that fit the bill, cost almost nothing to make, and also satisfied my recent cauliflower obsession.

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the soup:
1 head cauliflower
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 quart low-sodium chicken broth (mock-chicken broth or vegetable broth for a vegetarian soup)
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

First, I removed the leaves and core from the head of cauliflower and gave it a rough chop. I also chopped up the onion and minced the garlic.

I heated the oil over medium heat, threw in the garlic and onion, and sauteed for about 5 minutes. Normally, I like to cook onions and garlic until they are very soft and a little browned, but in order to maintain the color of the soup (and because the mixture is later pureed), I cooked them a little less this time.

Next, I added the cauliflower and stock, brought it to a boil, reduced the heat to low, covered the pot and let the mixture simmer for 15 minutes.

Once the cauliflower was tender, I removed the pot from the heat and pureed it until smooth using my immersion blender (if you don't have an immersion blender, you can blend the soup in batches in a regular blender, just be careful!). I then folded in the Parmesan cheese, and seasoned with plenty of freshly ground pepper.

As the soup was cooking, I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and grated about a cup of Romano cheese (the original uses Parmesan, but I used all of my Parmesan up in the soup itself). I then spread the cheese on a foil-covered baking sheet, cooked it about 10 minutes, then removed the sheet and let the cheese cool for about 5 minutes. The cheese was supposed to peel away from the foil in perfect sheets of crisps; unfortunately, it stuck and I was forced to scrape the cheese off the foil and crumble it on top of my soup. It still tasted really good.

The soup was just what I was looking for, creamy (without any cream!) yet light, filling yet healthy. And it took less than 40 minutes to prepare. While I would probably serve this alongside some sort of meat entree if I was 100% better, tonight, with just a couple of slices of crusty French bread, it was the perfect dinner for my poor recovering self...

Willow

2010-03-14T12:06:00.003-04:00

Last night, we took another rare trip to Virginia for a friend's birthday party (drinks and board games!), and decided to hit up another of Washingtonian's Top 100, Willow, about a block and a half off the Ballston metro stop. Being a District snob, I wasn't expecting to be wowed, despite the restaurant's high placement on the top 100. But holy hell, was I wrong. Willow definitely earns its No. 39 spot on the list. Every dish we ordered demonstrated the great level of care taken by Chef Tracy O'Grady and her staff, and if you haven't been, I suggest you take yourself over there post-haste!

Click below to see what we ate!

Although it is a lovely space, walking into the restaurant, I still had lowered expectations, as the set-up seemed a little upscale diner-y to me (with a partitioned off section in the middle of the floor). My hopes started to rise, however, upon the arrival of our server, who was friendly, warm and professional, despite having 4 big tables in addition to us.

Mark started out the night with a surprise, ordering the Butter Poached Lobster Agnolotti, with cauliflower puree, butternut squash, savory, Parmesan chips, and sherry-lobster sauce (shellfish does not typically call to him). The appetizer was pure decadence, with rich, buttery sauce (which I sopped up with the complimentary bread) and the savory velvet of the cauliflower puree. The Parmesan chips added a nice crunch, and the sweetness of the butternut squash cubes helped out with what would have otherwise been almost overwhelming butter.

Butter Poached Lobster Agnolotti

Wanting to balance out the richness of the lobster dish, we also ordered the Roasted Beets and Goat's Cheese Salad, with marinated red and yellow beets, aged goat's cheese, baby greens, candied walnuts, and sherry vinaigrette. The first thought that struck me was, "What a beautiful plate!" Every element of the dish was plated with such deliberation, and upon taking a bite, I realized that the same level of care was put into making sure the taste lived up to the same standards. The golden beets were subtly marinated, allowing the delicious roasted beet flavor to shine through. The dish came with two types of goat's cheese: the first, plated off to the side, was a creamy, almost Brie-like cheese, sharp, pungent and perfect when taken in a bite with the sweet golden beet. The second, a more classic goat's cheese, was sandwiched in between two layers of finely minced roasted red beet, like a gorgeous little beet-and-cheese Oreo. The greens were lightly dressed with the tangy sherry vinaigrette, which gave the dish an ideal level of acid.

Roasted Beets and Goat's Cheese Salad

I ordered the Lady flatbread (which our server informed us was his favorite), with creamy leeks, Parmesan cheese, smoked goat's cheese, Nueski's bacon, rosemary and sherry vinegar. I could easily see why Willow considers their grilled flatbreads the restaurant's signature dish - the flatbread itself was perfectly seasoned, crisp and cracker-like, just the way I like my flatbreads to be. And it was clear that the ingredients were just top-notch - the saltiness of the thick-cut bacon was balanced out by the creaminess of the leeks and the smokiness of the goat's cheese. Again, the acidity of the sherry vinegar really brightened the dish.

The Lady Flatbread

In another departure from the norm, Mark ordered the vegetarian entree, the Miniature Roasted Pumpkin with Faro and Barley Risotto, which also came with butternut squash ravioli, spaghetti squash, and smoked tomato butter. He absolutely raved about the dish, from the fresh ravioli, to the complexity of the flavors and textures of the faro and barley risotto. From my few bites, I could see where he was coming from - the balance of flavors was spot-on, and the presentation of the dish was just phenomenal.

Miniature Roasted Pumpkin With Faro and Barley Risotto

We opened the dessert menu to find a chocolate peanut butter trio. I smiled, looked up at Mark, and said, "We pretty much have to get the chocolate peanut butter thing, right?" He nodded. Each little bite was outstandingly done, but my favorite was the peanut butter ice cream topped peanut butter & chocolate cookie, which was not too sweet.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Trio

We both really loved our meal at Willow. Mark went so far as to say it was one of the best meals he's had in the D.C. metro area. If Willow is indicative of Virginia's top dining options, we may need to cross the river more often...

Red Rocks Firebrick Pizzeria

2010-03-11T21:47:00.008-05:00

*Post by Mark.
Ever the pizza fan, I've been trying to keep up with the best pizzas in and around the District. Conversations involving both DC and Pizza typically revolve around any combination of 2 Amy's, Pizzeria Paradiso, Pete's Apizza, Comet Ping Pong and one additional place that I've never been able to visit. That place is called Red Rocks and serves up Firebrick Pizzas in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood near Columbia Heights.

(Click Read More below to see how Red Rocks stacks up)

Red Rocks featured prominently in last year's Best Bites Pizza Pool from the Washingtonian- a March Madness style tournament that used reader polling to crown a winner. Obviously flawed, the tournament booted 2 Amy's and Comet Ping Pong in the early rounds and pitted Red Rocks against a suburban chain called Flippin' Pizza. I've tried Flippin' Pizza, and I can confidently say that I've had better pizza in mall food courts, so this survey's credibility is called into question.* Nevertheless, I have continued to hear good things about this Red Rocks, and today, a warm spring afternoon and a couple of hungry friends gave me a good excuse to wander over.

Red Rocks sits on a quiet residential street corner in what appears to be an old townhouse. Inside has a nice little bar and limited seating. Outside has a patio with several tables perfect for people watching. My friends and I chose a table outside and together, we combined forces getting three pizzas to share.

First, was the Margherita Pizza. This often tends to be the worst (i.e. most boring) of the pizzas I choose, yet for some reason I continue to order it no matter where I go. If nothing else, it serves as a constant in tasting pizzas from different places. How well does their traditional Margherita hold up? Well, Red Rocks' basil didn't really jump out at me and the pizza was left tasting somewhat flat. While it may have been the worst of the three, at least it looked pretty.

Margherita

Next up was the Salsiccia which was topped with roasted red peppers and some delicious fennel sausage. The sausage and peppers added some needed flavor where the Margherita fell flat. You'll probably notice a decent char on the crust which I enjoyed on all of the pizzas, but found them all lacking a certain dynamic that I've found in other similarly thin pizzas.

Salsiccia

Last was the Chicken and Broccolini, a heartier brand of pizza topped with black olives. This was probably the most successful of the three, as it added a little depth to the slightly lacking crust. The chicken and broccolini provided some subtle flavors that weren't overwhelmed by having too much black olive in the picture.

Chicken And Broccolini

In the end, the pizzas at Red Rocks are certainly above average - maybe even some of the better pies in DC. But the crust was missing a certain complexity (check out Paradiso) and the toppings were missing a certain artistry (check out 2 Amy's) that I've enjoyed much more at some other places. While Red Rocks may be pushing second tier, one thing it does have going for it is a cute space and a nice front patio to enjoy the warmer weather. The beer menu is also rather encouraging.

*I hypothesize that Flippin' Pizza has an advantage in this style of pool due to the fact that seven suburban locations give them a wider base of people that are familiar with them. Either that, or the DC pizza lobby is a stronger entity than we ever knew. Watch out DC, their eighth mediocre location will be opening soon in Dupont Circle!

Gorgonzola Pear Pasta

2010-03-11T09:06:00.001-05:00

I'm currently dying. Well, okay, not dying, but very, very uncomfortable - right now, I'm sick, with a cough so bad that it makes me feel like my ribs are breaking with each fit. But I still have to eat, right (and um, Mark does, too)? Luckily, I found this quick and delicious dish from allrecipes. And man, talk about easy - I'm not sure you can get much easier than this. This vegetarian dish is worth putting in your weekday dinner line-up.

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the pasta:
9 ounces whole wheat penne pasta
2 tbsp. butter
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 large pear, peeled and cubed
1/2 cup chopped and toasted walnuts
Fresh ground pepper

First, I cooked the pasta for about 10 minutes (until al dente). While the pasta was going, I toasted the walnuts in a separate pan. I drained the pasta, put it back in the pot, then threw in the cheeses and butter and stirred over medium heat until melted.

Next, I stirred in the cream and heated through. Finally, I added the pears and some freshly ground pepper, and stirred, making sure the pear cubes were covered in the cheesy sauce.

I topped the dish with the toasted walnuts. Mark really loved this dish, and so did I. The sharp and spicy bite of the Gorgonzola cheese is perfectly paired with the sweet pear, and the crunchy walnuts provide a nice textural contrast. I also really liked the nuttiness of the whole wheat pasta (which I typically never use, but Mark is trying to convince me to eat more whole grains). And I LOVE a yummy dish that takes less than 15 minutes to put together (prep included)!

Oyamel's Lunch Tasting Menu

2010-03-10T14:46:00.004-05:00

*Guest post by Mark.

We've been to Oyamel on other occasions, so it was one of the first places that sprang to mind when taking an out-of-town friend out for lunch. What better way than to showcase DC than with a trip to one of the offerings of the DC's most celebrated chefs (and GQ's 2009 Chef of the Year ) Jose Andres. For lunch, the restaurant offers a 'tasting menu' for twenty dollars per person in which you get two antojitos (think small, tapas-style, street foods) and a taco of your choice. The menu was somewhat limited, but a nice way to enjoy some ambitious Margaritas and top-notch Mexican food on a spring afternoon where the thermometer pushed into the 60s.

Check out what we ate. Click READ MORE below

We started with the table-side guacamole (not included in the tasting menu price) because I have a guacamole problem. Oyamel's guac is certainly some of the best in the city. The Serrano chile adds a little kick, and some queso fresco sprinkled over the top is a nice, light touch. That having been said, it's a little pricey at $13. Not to mention that a second helping of the chips and salsa costs you an additional $4.

Table-side prepared guacamole and the signature Oyamel margarita

Joining the guacamole on our table were the signature Oyamel margaritas (totally worth the $11). While the body of the drink is fantastic, its the chef's 'Salt Air' topping that gets your attention. Rather than lining the drink's rim with an annoying mouthful of actual salt, the drink is topped with a lightly salted foam. The result is the perfect hint of saltiness to compliment the tequila and lime flavors without making you feel like you're munching on a handful of the stuff.

Curious as to how to accomplish this foamy topper, I did some quick google research and thanks to the Washingtonian's Cyntia Hacinli I found that it's quite simple given you have the correct ingredients. The magic additive that you probably don't have in your fridge is soy lecithin, which can be found at GNC stores and when taken in moderation is 'good for brain development and heart disease prevention'.

See! I knew drinking was making me smarter.

Oyamel's Margarita Salt Air:
2 cups water
1 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon soy lecithin

After combining the ingredients in a bowl, blend them together with a hand-held mixer. Once you've accumulated over an inch of foam on top of the mixture, just go ahead and scrape that onto your cocktail.

But back to the food. The first of our antojitos to hit the table was the Tamal Verde- a nice, if kind of forgettable, tamale served with a tomatillo green sauce, shredded chicken, chile, garlic and cilantro. At this point, I'm realizing that while the lunch tasting menu may be a nice way to experience Jose Andres' cuisine, the menu excludes some of the spendier (aka, the better) dishes. Here, the Tamal Verde was a case in point.

Tamal Verde

Next up was the Nopalitos, which is a salad of baby cactus, red and yellow tomatoes a lime dressing. It wasn't mind-blowing, but the cactus and tomato provided a much needed balance to our other meat-skewing selections. Combined with the lime dressing, the salad proved really light and refreshing.

Nopalitos

Up next in the queue were the Albondigas Enchipotladas Con Queso Doble Crema- some really flavorful meatballs served in a chipotle sauce with crumbled 'double cream' cheese and cilantro.

Albondigas Enchipotladas Con Queso Doble Crema

Then came the last of the antojitos as the Arrachera Con Salsa Molcajete y Nopales Escabeche arrived. This dish served up a perfectly marinated skirt steak in a sauce of grilled tomatoes, tomatillos, green onions, cilantro and green chile. As a nice little garnish, it came with pickled cactus paddle. The juiciness and overall flavor of the skirt steak made this the hands down champion of the afternoon.

Arrachera Con Salsa Molcajete y Nopales Escabeche

By the time the tacos arrived, I'd eaten so much that I practically forgot we'd ever ordered them. Based on Angela's raves from the last time we went to Oyamel, I decided I had to try the Lengua Guisada, which is a corn tortilla stuffed with braised beef tongue with radishes and a roasted pasilla chili sauce. I may not have been as blown away by the taco as Angela, but I still find the beef tongue a nice, tender treat.

Tinga Poblana (left) and Lengua Guisada (right) tacos

Were I to try Oyamel for lunch again, I'd probably skip the guacamole and order what I wanted from the a la carte menu. Unless you have the will power to pass up the inspiring margaritas, the notion of an inexpensive tasting menu lunch here can be a little bit of a trap. But when have I ever complained about paying for good food?

Honey-Glazed Ribs

2010-03-09T19:59:00.003-05:00

After our Ping Pong Dim Sum outing the other night, I got it in my head to try to make a version of the dish Mark liked so much, the honey-glazed ribs (true story, I made Mark Chinese spareribs for our first date). I found this recipe at allrecipes, and while it's not really that similar to the Ping Pong dish, I thought it might fit the bill. As it worked out, I actually preferred my version, hearty and bursting with flavor. Mark's reaction to the dish? To ask for seconds.

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the ribs:
4 lbs pork country-style ribs (Soviet Safeway didn't have any spareribs)
1 cup honey
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp. ginger, minced
1 tsp. ground mustard

First, at around lunchtime, I cut up the ribs in order to maximize the marinade-to-surface-area ratio and placed them in a big plastic freezer bag.

Next, I thoroughly combined all the other ingredients and poured about half of the mixture into the bag with the ribs. I tossed both the bag and the remaining marinade into the fridge and went back to work.

At around 7 pm, I took the ribs out of the fridge to let them come to room temperature (still in the bag), and preheated the oven to 350 degrees. Twenty minutes later, I removed the ribs from the bag, shook off most of the marinade, and placed them on a baking pan on top of a couple of racks. I covered the pan with foil and threw it in the oven.

After about an hour, I uncovered the pan, plastered the ribs with the remaining marinade, and baked them uncovered for another 45 minutes. I served this dish up with some white rice. While these ribs bore little relation to the delicate and subtlely-flavored Ping Pong dish, man, they were some good eatin'. I would make them again in a heartbeat.

Artichoke and Spinach Dip

2010-03-08T09:05:00.001-05:00

I headed to my friend Annie's place for Oscar watching last night, and while I wanted to be really creative and make appetizers to match each Best Picture nominee, I was just way too lazy (see endlesssimmer for more of an effort). Instead, I decided to go with a tried and true artichoke and spinach dip, with some of my expected modifications. The result? A really quick and easy recipe you can take to any future shin-dig!

Click below to get the recipe!

List of ingredients for the dip:
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup grated Romano cheese
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
salt and pepper to taste
8 or more (to taste) shakes of Frank's Red Hot sauce
Juice from half a lemon
1 (14 ounce) can artichoke hearts, drained and roughly chopped
1/2 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

First, I preheated oven to 350 degrees, and lightly greased a small baking dish (in this case, a pie tin).

Next, I prepped all the ingredients that needed prepping - thawed, drained, and squeezed out the spinach, grated the cheeses, combined the seasonings, drained and chopped the artichokes, and minced the garlic.

In a medium bowl, I mixed together the softened cream cheese, mayonnaise, cheeses (including the mozzarella), seasonings, and garlic. At this point, I also added about 8 shakes of Frank's Red Hot and the juice from half a large lemon.

I gently stirred in artichoke hearts and spinach, then transferred the mixture to the greased pie tin, and topped it all off with a little more mozzarella.

I threw it in the oven for about 25 minutes, until heated through.

While this isn't the healthiest dip, it is delicious! I also whipped up some mascarpone-stuffed Medjool dates (sans prosciutto) to take with me. I probably could have shown up with a six-pack of beer and been warmly welcomed anyway, but bringing my dip and dates put an extra smile on my hosts' faces...

Ping Pong Dim Sum

2010-03-07T11:01:00.004-05:00

I really love dim sum. For the uninitiated, dim sum refers to a Southern Chinese style of dining where servers roam about the restaurant with carts piled high with bamboo steamer baskets and small plates, and customers help themselves to the dishes they want. Traditional dim sum consists of a variety of steamed buns, dumplings, fried rolls, rice noodle dishes, and other small plates of vegetables and roasted meats. I generally don't get to have it very often, as D.C. doesn't have a whole lot of dim sum options. Mark has never had it at all, so this Friday night, I thought I'd ease him into the cuisine at Ping Pong Dim Sum, a UK-based chain version (I was inspired by fellow D.C. food blogger strawberry basil's recent post). I'd heard mixed reviews about newly opened (as of December 2009) Chinatown eatery, and so I kept my expectations low, but we walked out pleasantly surprised and satisfied. While it's definitely not representative of your traditional dim sum experience (no deep fried chicken feet?!!), the dishes we had were well-executed and tasty. I would definitely recommend Ping Pong for a low-key, pre-movie dinner, or a fun group outing.

Click below to see what we ate!

We walked into the trendily decorated restaurant on 7th street at about 6:15 pm. While the bar was packed with the happy hour crowd, there were still plenty of tables in the huge space, so we were seated immediately. Our server introduced himself with a quick smile and explained how to order: instead of the typical cart-based operation, Ping Ping has adopted more of a sushi restaurant model of dim sum- each table gets a sheet of paper with a list of all the items on the menu, and you check off the dishes you want. We were pretty hungry, so we opted to get several dishes. The service was okay, although not particularly welcoming, and the kitchen kept the dishes coming out at a fast and furious pace. In fact, it was a little too fast, as the dishes were arriving much more quickly than the servers could bus the empty plates - we ran out of room on the small table more than once. We weren't in a particular rush on Friday (or at least I thought we weren't*), so the pace was a little disconcerting, but I can see where it would be a plus if you just wanted to grab a quick meal before a movie, or before meeting up with friends to dance the night away.

Our first dish was the pork puff. I've never had a dim sum dish quite like this, but both Mark and I really liked it. The hand made puff pastry was light, flaky, and flavorful on its own, and provided a nice balance to the sweetness of the honey roasted pork and caramelized onion filling (which would have been a little too sweet on its own).

Pork Puff

Next, we moved on to a trio of dumplings with translucent white pastry wrappers: har gau (with king prawn and bamboo shoots), spicy pork dumpling, and spicy chicken dumpling. This type of wrapper, typically made with rice flour and/or wheat starch, is one of my favorite things about eating dim sum - something about the texture of the wrappers makes me crave them, and so far, I've never successfully replicated them at home. These were good, although the wrappers were a little thicker than I would have preferred, and a little bland. Mark didn't mind this and pointed out that we had been provided a number of spicy dipping sauces to combat any lack of seasoning. The filling for each of the dumplings was very good - the har gau was filled with a succulent yet crunchy prawn/bamboo shoot mixture, and the pork and chicken dumpling fillings had great flavor and a respectable amount of heat.

Har Gau

Spicy Pork Dumpling

Spicy Chicken Dumpling

The next dish to arrive at the table was the crispy duck spring rolls, served with hoi sin sauce. These were nicely fried, and the filling was good, but not quite ducky enough for me. However, cucumber and spring onion added a needed fresh greenness to the filling. Mark loved the hoi sin sauce, and didn't limit himself to using it on just the spring rolls (I don't think he used it on the dessert dishes, but I'm pretty sure he put it on everything else).

Crispy Hoi Sin Duck Spring Roll

Mark's favorite dish of the night arrived late in the game, the honey glazed pork ribs. He really loved the subtle sweetness of the honey (he swirled each rib around in the honey glaze painting the bottom of the dish), as well as the tenderness of the roasted meat, which literally fell off the bone. I liked the ribs a lot, but would have preferred something, maybe spice, or heat, or acidity, to cut the richness the meat.

Honey Glazed Ribs

We ordered the crispy asparagus just to get a little more green in our meal, but this was the least successful dish of the night. The asparagus arrived at the table almost cold, and each spear was stringy and tough to eat. I have generally heard that the vegetarian options at Ping Pong are across-the-board sub-par, and the asparagus did not change my mind.

Crispy Asparagus

My favorite dish of the night was the lemon chicken. The juicy chicken breast pieces were bursting with flavor from the chili, honey, and lemon glaze. I loved the citrusy glaze on the meat - it really brightened up the dish.

Lemon Chicken

Our final savory dish of the evening was the smoked duck and orange salad. I really liked the tangy, gingery vinaigrette and how it played off against the sweet orange segments, as well as the crispy shallots topping the salad. The smoked duck, however, wasn't really anything special (I didn't taste any smoked flavor), and didn't really add anything to the salad.

Smoked Duck And Orange Salad

For dessert, we got two small plates, the first of which consisted of two Valrhona chocolate buns. While the dark, rich chocolate itself was decadent and delicious, I was not a fan of the dish. The surrounding dough was completely overwhelming, heavy and bland - I'm pretty sure they use the same dough for their savory steamed buns, and here, it was just a terrible mismatch.

Valrhona Chocolate Bun

Our second dessert dish, the roasted pineapple and coconut spring rolls with butterscotch sauce was much more successful - roasting pineapple takes the edge off the sweetness of the raw fruit and gives you a deeper and more complex flavor, one that paired perfectly with the coconut and surprisingly, the butterscotch sauce.

Roasted Pineapple And Coconut Spring Roll With Butterscotch Sauce

I've read a lot of so-so to terrible reviews of this restaurant, and I sort of understand - if you are looking for a really traditional dim sum experience, I could see being very disappointed. But if you're looking for a fun and/or quick meal that gives you a taste of dim sum without requiring you to step too far out of the box, Ping Pong Dim Sum is a solid choice.

*After dinner, Mark and I decided to meet up with my best friend at Kelly's Irish Times (my friends and I used to go all the time in law school). I thought I was just going for a beer and a quick game of Big Buck Hunter - those plans disappeared when I realized that all of my friends were gathered there for a slightly delayed surprise birthday party! What a fantastic night....

Poste Moderne Brasserie

2010-03-05T10:57:00.007-05:00

Last night was date night for me and Mark, so we planned a whole dinner/movie combo (Shutter Island, which was very good) and decided to check off one more of the restaurants from Washingtonian's 100 Best Restaurants list, Poste Moderne Brasserie. I'd previously been to the restaurant, which is set in the original 1841 General Post Office (adjacent to the Hotel Monaco, right by the Verizon Center), for drinks in the summer, but had never eaten there despite hearing numerous rave reviews. Poste is a beautiful space, and while there were some flaws in the service, the staff was absolutely on top of them, and made every effort to make amends. More importantly, while not all elements of the food quite lived up to expectations, we had a very nice, solidly executed and creative meal - I saw enough potential in what we ate that I'd be willing to come back for one of Chef Robert Weland's special offerings, like the Poste Roasts offered last summer, or his Market-to-Market dinners.

Click below to see what we ate!

We walked into the crowded and noisy bar area around 7 pm, and I quickly remembered that Poste tends to be a sort of happy hour hot-spot. Luckily, our smiling hostess led us to a dining room located in a quieter area... where a huge party was immediately seated beside us. Given how busy the restaurant was, it was understandable that our otherwise very efficient, friendly, and knowledgable server seemed a little rushed. The meal started with three kinds of bread, a country bread, a classic dinner roll (topped with sea salt) and a rosemary biscuit. All three were solid, nothing outstanding, but I liked the rosemary biscuit the best, and probably would have liked it even more had it been served a little warmer.

I had fully intended to order the steak tartare on brioche, an appetizer recommended to me more than once, but Mark talked me out of it (he's not a fan of tartare generally), so we ordered the house-made charcuterie board, with a rabbit terrine, fennel salami, porchetta, and coppa (a.k.a. capicola), instead. It was very good relative to the charcuterie I've had other places, and it always impresses me when a restaurant prepares/cures /smokes its own meats, but I think the problem is that meat (and cheese!) boards are just not my cup of tea. That being said, the flavors in the rabbit terrine (hints of apple and bacon) were really nicely developed, and the salami and capicola were perfectly salty and fatty. Mark liked the porchetta, especially when eaten with the accompanying cornichons and whole grain mustard.

House-Made Charcuterie Board

We tend to get a little obsessed with certain types/styles of foods for short periods of time, and right now we are all about dishes topped with a slow-cooked or poached eggs. So naturally, we also ordered the Beluga lentil salad, with a slow-cooked duck egg, pork belly and crispy shallots. The pork belly was really, really incredible, just the way I always hope pork belly will be when I order it - salty, fatty, juicy and melt-in-your-mouth tender. The slow-cooked duck egg was pretty flawlessly executed and seasoned as well. The white of the egg dissolved on my tongue with delicious eggy flavor, and I would have been absolutely satified with an appetizer of just the rich orange yolk and a couple of slices of bread to sop it up. But, as Mark astutely noted, the rich goodness of the yolk was also kind of one of the dishes missteps - not so much the yolk itself, but the fact that the flavor overpowered the lentils. I agreed that the lentils could have used a little more seasoning (as well as a little more cooking, as they were a bit firm for my tastes). I did love the crispy shallot topping, they were like the most delicate, airy little onion rings you ever tasted.

Beluga Lentil Salad

For our entrees, I got the special, a cassoulet with duck confit, heirloom white beans, crispy pig tail, lamb tongue, pork belly and sausage. When I saw this dish on the specials menu, my first thought was, "Whoa, that is a lot of meat." My next thought was, "That is a LOT of meat! I'm getting it." And I'm really glad I did. The different varieties of meats in the dish were all fantastically cooked in the deep brown, full-bodied sauce, each adding to the complex layers of flavor. Again, I think my favorite was the pork belly, but the salty, juicy confited duck leg was a close second. The gigantic heirloom white beans absorbed all of the savory tastes in the dish and provided an almost overwhelmingly filling element to the dish.

Cassoulet Of Duck Confit

Mark got the "crispy envelope of pig's trotter," with hen egg (again with the egg! We may need help), frisee, and whole grain mustard sauce. This dish struck me as very unique and creative - the meat was wrapped in a dough of some sort, which was then cooked until crispy. Mark liked the dish, and particularly enjoyed the mustard sauce. He also liked the accompanying vegetable (not the frisee) which had both savory and sweet notes, but we couldn't tell what it was.

Crispy Envelope of Pig's Trotter

Finally, we ordered Brussels sprouts with crispy tesa (kind of like bacon/pancetta), and hedgehog mushrooms as sort of an afterthought, but the side dish turned out to be the star of the meal - the sprouts were gorgeously caramelized yet still tender, and I loved the earthy, meaty flavor of the mushrooms.

Brussels Sprouts With Crispy Tesa And Hedge Hogs

I wanted to hold off on discussing the service issue until the end, because we weren't really that bothered by it, and the staff really made an effort to make it up to us. Here's the deal: Mark's entree arrived first, and the server (not our server) who set it down assured us that my dish was following right behind it. We then sat there for a couple minutes, until our server walked by, noticed that I didn't have my meal, and let out an audible, "Oh!" She then hurried away to the kitchen, and upon her return, sincerely apologized for the wait and advised that the cassoulet would be ready in a moment (Mark theorized that it was probably about to go out when someone noticed that something wasn't quite right with it). The dish arrived a few minutes later. Again, it was a little hiccup, and while Mark and I had both noted it, it wasn't about to taint our whole restaurant experience.

After our entrees had been cleared, we sat for about 10-15 minutes. While we had fully intended to order dessert (well, at least Mark had), we had also planned on catching an 8:45 movie, and the dinner had already run much longer than either of us had expected. I saw our server talking to the floor manager, and wondered if she had maybe forgotten about us. She came over soon afterwards with the dessert menus, and enthused about the chocolate bread pudding, which did sound really delicious. Unfortunately, she also advised us that it would take about 10 minutes to prepare, and we were already cutting it pretty close with the movie time. We decided to pass on dessert and just asked for the check, which seemed to catch her off guard. I then saw her speak to her manager again, at which point he walked over to our table, apologized once again for the delay on my entree and said that the charcuterie board we had ordered was on the house.

Mark and I both really appreciated how quickly and smoothly the staff at Poste identified the problem and took steps to make it right. And while we didn't love it, it was a very good meal (that I suspect may have been made even better if we had ordered different dishes) - I could probably be pretty easily convinced to give it another try.

Tandoori Chicken with Basmati Rice and Indian Dahl with Spinach

2010-03-03T08:12:00.000-05:00

As you may have guessed from my recent posts, I haven't done much cooking lately - I've either been too busy/tired/lazy, or I've been out of town. But the other day, I felt an undeniable itch to get back in the kitchen and make myself a nice, well-balanced, healthy-ish home-cooked meal. As I've made a pledge to try to cook "outside the box" more, I decided to try out Indian (a cuisine I rarely eat, much less cook, but generally enjoy) with Tandoori-Style Chicken and Indian Dahl (for all you vegetarians out there!). The recipe for the chicken I got from my Williams-Sonoma cookbook; then it was just a matter of finding a vegetable side dish to complement it. I found this one at allrecipes, and the best part is that it called only for spices I already had (with the exception of the garam masala)! Strangely, my vegetarian "side" dish turned out a lot better than my chicken entree, but I think with some practice in cooking Indian cusine, I can turn out tastier dishes in the future.

Click below to get the recipes!

List of ingredients for the Tandoori-Style Chicken:

1 chicken, about 4 lbs, cut into serving pieces

2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

1 1/2 cups (12 oz) low-fat plain yogurt

1 small yellow onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tbsp. minced fresh ginger

2 tsp. ground coriander

2 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. paprika (the original recipe calls for sweet or hot Hungarian paprika, but I couldn't find any. Sad!)

1/4 tsp. ground turmeric

1/4 tsp. cardamom

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper

2 tbsp. canola oil

1 1/2 cups Basmati rice

The prep for the chicken actually started the night before. First, I removed the skin from the chicken (except for the wings, because I'm not exactly sure how that would work), patted all the pieces down, brushed them with the lemon juice and placed them in my trusty casserole dish.

Next, I prepared the marinade by chopping up my onion, garlic and ginger, combining all my spices, and throwing it all in my tiny food processor (almost didn't fit!), pulsing until everything was thoroughly combined. You could also use a blender, but I don't have one, other than my immersion blender.

I poured the marinade over the chicken, making sure that each piece was well-coated, then I covered the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerated it overnight, turning the pieces over in the marinade the next morning before I went off to work.

List of ingredients for the Indian Dahl with Spinach:

1 1/2 cups red lentils

3 1/2 cups water

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. turmeric

1/2 tsp. chili powder

1 lb. spinach, rinsed and chopped

2 tbsp. butter

1 onion, chopped

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. mustard seed

1 tsp. garam masala

1/2 cup coconut milk
extra salt and pepper for seasoning

When I got home that evening, I started prepping the lentils by rinsing and soaking them for about 20 minutes. I actually got my lentils a while ago from my best friend, who is originally from Pullman, Washington, home of the National Lentil Festival (how cool is that?! An entire lentil festival? I would like to go, if just to see Tase T. Lentil, the festival's mascot). I've just been waiting for the opportunity to use them. Next, I brought the water to boil in a small saucepan, then added the salt, drained lentils, turmeric, and chili powder.

I covered the saucepan, reduced the heat to low, and let the lentil mixture simmer for about 15 minutes. I then threw in the spinach and let it cook about 5 more minutes, until the lentils were tender.

In the meanwhile, I melted the butter in another pan, added the onion, cumin and mustard seed, and sauteed about 10 minutes.

Once the onion was translucent (just the way I like it!), I added the whole pan to the lentil-spinach mixture.

The final step was to stir in the garam masala and coconut milk, season to taste, and cook until heated through.

I turned my attention back to the chicken, which I had taken out of the refrigerator to let it come to room temperature (covered!). I preheated the oven to about 500 degrees, and placed the chicken pieces on a foil-covered baking sheet, making sure to leave the marinade clinging to the pieces as best I could. I let the chicken cook about 50 minutes, turning once halfway through, until the white meat was all the way cooked through. I served the chicken on top of some rice, with the dahl on the side.

The dahl was really, really yummy, with complex flavors, and was very filling. I would eat it on its own over rice any day (and will for the next couple of days, as there were tons of leftovers). The chicken...was good, but I felt like it was missing something. Not being very familiar with Indian cooking, I can't quite figure it out yet, but I'm willing to try out a few more recipes in this cuisine to learn.

New Haven: Frank Pepe Pizzeria

2010-03-02T10:30:00.004-05:00

This past weekend, Mark and I had a wedding to go to just outside of New Haven, Connecticut. After spending 16 hours of traveling from San Diego to Chicago to D.C. to New Haven (in one day!), we decided to reward ourselves on Saturday before the wedding with some New Haven-style pizza, courtesy of the legendary Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. New Haven-style pizza, known as "apizza," is a style of Neopolitan pizza characterized most popularly by its thin crust. I'd heard others wax poetic about the superiority of New Haven-style pizza, and had eaten one of D.C.'s top New Haven-style pizza offerings at Pete's Apizza (which is good), but was excited to have a pizza directly from the source - the apizza was invented by Frank Pepe on Wooster Street in the early 1920's, and the pizzeria has been dishing it out to locals and tourists alike ever since. Did the pizza live up to expectations? Um, the only answer to that is a resounding "hell yes!"

Click below to see what we ate!

We fully intended to do a sort of pizza showdown between Pepe's and Sally's Apizza just down the street. Unfortunately, Sally, not knowing of our intentions, did not see fit to open until 4 pm (the wedding was at 4:30). Nevertheless, we decided to go ahead with our plan to eat at Pepe's (at its original location on Wooster). We arrived at Pepe's a little after it opened at 11:30 am - there were already quite a few parties seated, but we managed to snag an empty booth upon walking in (about 30 minutes later, there was a line out the door).

Upon looking at the menu, I noted the other defining characteristic of New Haven-style pizza - normally, a "plain" pizza would include crust, tomato sauce and mozzarella; not so at Pepe's. Here, an "original tomato pie" comes sans mozzarella (just crust topped with tomato sauce, and sprinkled with Parmesan, garlic and oregano), but you can order it as a topping, which we did. We also added sausage and fresh garlic.

While we were waiting for our pizza, we decided to order a small pitcher of beer (we were on vacation!), and Pepe's just happen to have Long Trail, a Vermont beer with which Mark is intimately familiar, on tap. As our warm and welcoming server checked our ids, she smilingly noted that I was from Oregon, as was the manager of that location. A few minutes later, the manager walked over to our table, and we happily chatted about Eugene and his recent trip to D.C. with his family. I thought to myself, "If the pizza is as good as the staff is friendly, Pepe's is in pretty good shape."

After about a 20-minute wait, our pizza arrived at the table in all its glory. Behold:

At this point, Mark and I looked up at each other with big grins on our faces.

The sausage was everything you want sausage to be, juicy, salty, and incredibly flavorful. There were visible fennel seeds here and there atop the individual pieces, yet the fennel flavor was really subtle and lovely. The fresh minced garlic scattered across the top of the pie provided nice, sharp bites of flavor (although Mark said he would have preferred roasted garlic), and the mozzarella, while not the best I've ever had on pizza, was very good. And the sauce? Fresh tasting, ideally seasoned, and refreshing tangy - just bursting with tomato flavor. More importantly, the ingredients on the pizza were really well-balanced, at least for me - I know that some people prefer a less "saggy" pizza, but I loved everything about my pie.

The crust was a thing of beauty: perfectly seasoned and chewy throughout, but with the perfect amount of crispy crunch. The coal-fired oven gave the edges and bottom of the pizza a gorgeous char.

I managed to stop myself from eating the entire pizza (so I wouldn't be sick at the wedding), but it took all my willpower to do so. As we walked out, Mark said he couldn't conclusively say that he's ever had a better pizza. I agree. The pizza was magnificent, and the service was so friendly and welcoming - even though I didn't get a chance to sample Sally's, you better believe if I'm ever in the New Haven area again, I'm coming back to Pepe's for more!

San Diego: Luche Libre Gourmet Taco Shop

2010-03-02T00:21:00.009-05:00

*Post by Mark.

After the fish tacos, the next San Diego staple of foodie-lore was the San Diego-style burrito. Seemingly a contentious issue amongst locals, their burritos are made the "proper way," unlike some other *cough* *Chipotle* *cough* places that have set up shop in town. While most Americans are familiar with burritos that are served with beans and rice, the San Diego purists will tell you that's just not how it's done. After having tried a Classic Carne Asada Burrito from Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop in Mission Hills, I'm not ready to burn Chipotle to the ground, but I do think these crazy Southern Californians are onto something...

Plus, they could throw a stone and pretty much hit Mexico... so they probably know what they're talking about.

Click Read More below to see how the San Diego Burrito stacks up!

Lucha Libre is a funny sort of place. Located at arguably the most difficult place to park... in the world, it still finds itself slamming busy at 2 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon in February. It's on the wrong side of a busy street, on a steep hill near a busy intersection. To parallel park out front would actually appear the ultimate death trap.

When I walk inside there's not an open table to be found. Of course, there is the gold-trimmed Champions Table, but I'm not sure I'm up to the challenges that may present themselves in the event that I take a seat in this 'reserved' section.

Lucha Libre takes their high-flying, Mexican-Wrestling-Mask-Wearing motif to pretty extensive levels. The wrestling masks, tights and even shoes are on display everywhere amidst photos of the sport's greatest heros. An old movie plays on loop where the famous old-time luchadore El Santo lays the smack down on some deserving criminals. But it's not all for gimmick. As much as the culture is celebrated, even more so is the food.

This is where we get back to the San Diego stance on burritos. At Chipotle, you get yours made with beans and rice on the inside, right? Not the case south of Los Angeles. Here, you can still get your rice and beans, but you get it as a side. My Carne Asade burrito was made with the three simple ingredients of marinated steak, pico de gallo and guacamole. Ya know what? I didn't miss my rice or my beans one tiny bit! Boiled down to the bare minimum components, my burrito actually stood out thanks to the quality and marinade of the fresh beef and the really fantastic and creamy guacamole.

Carne Asada burrito

The other major difference between the burritos down here and other places? The tortilla isn't steamed, so you don't get that water-logged effect or the puddle that typically forms in the bottom of your wrap. Instead, it's lightly toasted. Also, you can forget the aluminum foil. This inexpensive lunch actually needed no foil to protect me from any inopportune leakage.

I was very, very enthused about my burrito. I'm not gonna say it was better than other burrito styles, just a really great kind of different. It's like comparing New York and Chicago style pizza. Can't I just have both?

San Diego: Grant Grill

2010-02-28T21:50:00.003-05:00

On our last night in San Diego, we headed out to San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter for dinner at Grant Grill, located in the lobby of the US Grant Hotel in the Gaslamp District. I think, if we hadn't had an amazing dinner at whisknladle the night before, we probably both would have been slightly happier with the meal. As it was, dinner at Grant Grill was...fine, but definitely suffered by comparison to whisknladle with regard to the food, service and price.

Lobby of the US Grant Hotel

Click below to see what we ate!

My first thought walking into the restaurant was that we were the youngest diners in the restaurant by at least 30 years. I felt like that didn't bode well for the meal, and it turns out, I was kinda right. Nevertheless, the decor was nice, modern and fun.

The meal started off with an amuse bouche of rare, seared beef and pickled Savoy cabbage. I love it when a restaurant sends out an amuse, but this was pretty blah, really bland with a sort of thrown-together feeling about it.

Seared rare beef with pickled Savoy cabbage

We were also served a complimentary pan of freshly baked, herb-topped focaccia. I really enjoyed the warm, crusty-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside bread; it might of been my favorite part of the meal.

House-made focaccia

With the fantastic egg-topped salad from the previous night still fresh in our memories, we decided to order the soft-poached egg appetizer, with pancetta, creamed spinach, and caramelized onion. It was good, one of the better dishes of the meal, but not even close to as good as the whisknladle salad. Nevertheless, the egg was nicely poached, and I liked the combination of the creaminess of the spinach and the sweetness of the onions. The crispy pancetta added a good textural contrast.

Soft poached egg with pancetta, creamed spinach and caramelized onions

We also order the "spiced" pork belly appetizer, with consomme, vermicelli, savoy cabbage, pearl onions, and chanterelle mushrooms. The dish was a disappointment - while the pork belly was fairly tender, the presentation was sloppy and unattractive, and every element of the dish was underseasoned. It also seemed like kind of a weird combination of ingredients.

Spiced pork belly

For my entree, I ordered the venison. I can't remember what came on the side with the meat (and it's not listed on the website), but the venison was pretty perfectly cooked and well-seasoned.

Venison

Mark ordered the Niman pork tenderloin, with ricotta dumplings, trotter hash, and heirloom apples. The pork was relatively juicy, and I liked that the ricotta dumplings had a good crust to them. However, there was nothing special about the dish whatsoever, and Mark seemed to prefer my venison.

Niman pork tenderloin

At this point, we were a little underwhelmed by the meal overall, so we decided to skip dessert at the restaurant (we ended up grabbing gelato and crepes at a cute little cafe down the street). While it's not the worst meal I've ever had, or even a bad meal, it was definitely overpriced. In addition, the service wasn't that great, as there were long stretches of time when we didn't see our server. Next time I'm in San Diego, I think I'll try something new...

San Diego: Whisknladle Bistro & Bar

2010-02-28T20:48:00.013-05:00

On our second evening in San Diego, Mark and I took a short drive over to gorgeous La Jolla to dine at whisknladle. We sort of picked the self-proclaimed "neighborhood bistro & bar" on a whim, and man, I am ridiculously glad we did. Whisknladle was recently chosen by Conde Nast as one of the top new restaurants worldwide, an honor I can wholeheartedly get behind.

Click below to see what we ate!

The entire experience was just a pleasure from beginning to end, starting with the lovely interior. The decor was both elegant and cozy, and every single person in the restaurant, both fellow diners and staff, looked delighted to be there.

The extensive menu gives you the option of ordering a bunch of small plates, or getting larger entree-sized portions. We decided to go with the small plate option, as it was way too hard to narrow it down to just two main dishes. If I wasn't afraid of making myself sick to my stomach, I would have happily ordered every dish on the menu. In fact, we even discussed coming back the next night to order everything we missed the first time around (as you will see in my next post, I kind of wish we had). Our server (from heaven) enthused about all of our selections, and showed an extensive knowledge of all the dishes, as well as a refreshing passion for both the restaurant and food in general. I will say, without reservation, that the service we received at whisknladle (including not only our server, but the entire staff) was the best I've ever had.

We started with the La Milpa Spinach Salad, with a slow-cooked egg, caramelized cauliflower and housemade pancetta. The egg was...I can't even really explain it. It melted into the dish, adding its lush dreamy richness to the other components. The cauliflower was perfectly browned and almost sweet, and the housemade pancetta, crunchy and ideally salty, was by far the best I've ever eaten. Mark agreed, and said it was the greatest thing he had eaten in awhile.

La Milpa Spinach Salad

In our quick research into the restaurant before our visit, the charred bone marrow, with capers, shallots, lemon, and parsley, and served with buttery toast, was a favorite among reviewers. It was a favorite with me as well - the fatty richness of the marrow was cut with the tangy capers and acidity from the lemon, and freshened up by the parsley. Mark didn't love it quite as much (I think it was a little fattier than he would have preferred), but liked it very much.

Charred Bone Marrow

Next, I'm sure to no one's suprise, we ordered the crispy sweetbreads, with a maple gaze, lentils, Brussels sprouts, and house-smoked bacon. While every single dish was impeccably prepared, this dish more than any other really showed the care and artistry of the kitchen - each element of the dish was truly outstanding on its own merits, and yet the sum was greater than its parts. The cornmeal-crusted, velvety pieces of sweetbreads, the salty, crunchy bacon, the delicately tender sprouts, and complex flavorfulness of the lentils combined into an exceptional dish, one I could happily eat every night for the rest of my life.

Crispy Sweetbreads

Because this was sort of my birthday dinner (I had to temporarily postpone celebrating on my actual birthday, which was last Sunday), Mark convinced me to order the grilled baby octopus, with Romesco (a Catalonian sauce typically made with almonds/pine nuts/hazelnuts, roasted garlic, olive oil and peppers), chorizo, mizuna and sweet potatoes (Mark doesn't like octopus, as it squicks him out a little). I'm so glad I did. The octopus was charred, yet tender, the spiciness of the chorizo was nicely balanced by sweet potato, and the Romesco sauce tied all the elements together.

Grilled Baby Octopus

The last of our savory dishes was a butternut squash ravioli, topped with butter, crispy sage, and Parmigiano Reggiano. It was the least successful dish of the night, but in a meal like this, that's like saying someone is the poorest millionaire. In any other restaurant, this elegant dish would have shined - the freshly made pasta was delicious, and the filling was luscious. Really, the very simple dish only suffered in comparison to the incredibly creative and complex dishes that came before it.

Butternut Squash Ravioli

Also, there was a little bit of lag time between the last couple of courses (which I didn't even notice, but Mark noted later), and so our server brought us complimentary drinks to apologize. It was a such a great gesture, a little touch that really cemented our already high opinion of the restaurant.

We ended the meal with a trio of macaroons (that Mark ordered after seeing a diner next to us get them). They were the ideal ending to the meal, combining flavors like lavender, white chocolate, dark chocolate and mint. The light crumbly cookies were the perfect amount of sweet - and were really pretty to boot!

Trio of Macaroons

There was not a single element of this meal that didn't make me smile. The food was phenomenal, the service was the best either of us had ever experienced, and the restaurant was stunning. One of the staff members explained to me that Chef Ryan Johnston refuses to keep anything on the menu for more than 4 weeks or so, because he wants to continue to challenge himself in the kitchen and keep things exciting - for me, this reflects the deep love of food, creativity and passion that Chef Johnston and his staff bring to the whisknladle kitchen. With the exception of Komi, I've never been more impressed with a dinner in my life. And even more surprising? Mark felt the same way, saying as we walked out into the warm, misty night that he could not have been happier. If you are ever in San Diego, please, please, please, make the trip out to La Jolla and visit whisknladle. I promise you it'll be more than worth your while.

San Diego: South Beach Bar & Grille

2010-02-28T17:47:00.007-05:00

This past week, Mark and I traveled cross country to San Diego, one of my very favorite cities in the entire world. We had one very good meal, one mind-blowing meal, and one so-so meal. The first of these was South Beach Bar & Grille, a place for which we got two separate and independent recommendations solely on the basis of their tacos. The bar & grille, located right on the Pacific in Ocean Beach, completely lived up to expectations, as far as the fish tacos were concerned.

Click below to see what we ate!

I have to say, I was a little startled by the appearance of the restaurant - it was kind of divey and dim - but I've had some really fantastic meals in dives before, so I wasn't completely put off. We started out with chips, guacamole, and salsa. The salsa and guacamole were fine, not great but not bad, and the chips were piping hot and nicely crispy and crunchy - definitely not out of a bag.

Chips with salsa and guacamole

Unfortunately, they were out of the shark tacos, which we had both really been looking forward to. But we recovered quickly and ordered three each: I had the mahi, the fried oyster, and the wahoo (a white fish); Mark also got the mahi, and got the chicken with Santa Fe sauce and the carne asada with guacamole sauce. We both loved the mahi - the fish was incredibly well-seasoned, with complex layers of flavors, and super succulent. My second favorite taco was the fried oyster; the oysters were perfectly battered and fried, and exploded with juiciness and flavor in my mouth. The wahoo was pretty good, but not quite up to the standards of the other two, as the fish was underseasoned and a little too delicate to hold up to the rest of the ingredients in the taco. Mark really liked the chicken, which came with a great spicy sauce. The big loser of the day was the carne asada, which was decent, but came with corn tortillas, which Mark likes much less than flour tortillas.

From left to right: Mahi, Wahoo, and Fried Oyster

Clockwise from the left: Carne Asada, Chicken with Santa Fe sauce, and Mahi

The tacos also came with rice and beans. While neither was outstanding, I liked the addition of onions and cilantro on the beans, which added a freshness to an otherwise unremarkable side.

Rice and beans

After lunch, we took advantage of the beautiful sunny day, strolled around Ocean Beach, and contemplated not ever coming back home...

Pizzeria Paradiso

2010-02-20T07:57:00.007-05:00

Last night, Mark and I decided to take a break from cooking. We didn't really have a sense of exactly what we wanted to eat; we just started walking and found ourselves in front of Pizzeria Paradiso, at 2003 P Street (right off Dupont Circle).* We've eaten pizza from Pizzeria Paradiso a couple of times before and haven't been too impressed by the pizza, but each time, we like it a little better. We decided to give it another chance tonight, and aside from the wait, I'm glad we did!

Click below to see what we ate!

When we walked into the very trendy pizzeria at around 6:15 (on a Friday night), it was absolutely packed to the rafters. In the last year, the Dupont location made a necessary move - it used to be housed in a very, very tiny (and pretty boring) space up the block. The new location is really gorgeous, all exposed brick and mellow tones, but one thing about the pizzeria remains the same - it's a hassle to get a seat on a Friday or Saturday night.

The host advised us that it would only be about a 20-30 minute wait for a table. I didn't particularly feel like waiting, but I figured we were already there and we could grab a beer and sit for a moment. We waited for almost an hour. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not blaming the host or the restaurant. It was my own fault for not foreseeing that the wait would obviously take much longer than 30 minutes; after all, every table was taken, and people were jammed around the lovely bar and small waiting area at the front of the restaurant, each with one of those buzzer coaster-thingys in hand. But by the time we got seated, I was starving and more than a little irritated.

My Saxo Blonde beer took a little of the edge off. It's a Belgian blonde ale, with a touch of yeasty bitterness and a nice spicy citrus-y finish. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Mark is always trying to make sure that we eat enough greens, so we started off with the Insalata Paradiso, with baby arugula with goat cheese, sweet peppers, mushrooms and pine nuts. It was a decent enough salad - nothing special, but the ingredients were nicely balanced with no significant deficiencies. My only suggestion would be that they use a different mushroom - I like regular white mushrooms for a lot of things, but generally don't love big raw chunks of them in salads.

Insalata Paradiso

Because we are sort of on a goat cheese and prosciutto kick, we also got the Crostino Formaggio di Capra, toasted homemade bread topped with goat cheese, prosciutto di Parma, and sundried tomatoes. We both really loved this appetizer. The bread was delicious and perfectly toasted and crunchy, and served as a strong base for the creamy goat cheese spread and velvety smooth, salty-sweet prosciutto. The sundried tomatoes lent a needed tart tang to the decadence of the dish.

Crostino Formaggio di Capra

For our main course, Mark ordered the Margherita pizza, with tomato, basil and (subbed in) fresh Buffalo mozzarella, and added pancetta, while I ordered the Atomica pizza, with tomato, salami, hot pepper flakes, and mozzarella (I omitted the black olives so I could share with Mark without him having to pick them off). Both pizzas were very, very good, with crisp, almost cracker-like crusts, and stellar ingredients. We both preferred the Atomica, which greatly benefited from the heat from the hot pepper flakes, and was topped with this phenomenal salami - each slice of the cured meat was like an explosion of flavor. However, Mark's pizza was also really tasty, especially with his addition of pancetta adding a much-needed saltiness, without which the pie would have almost seemed bland.

Margherita pizza with fresh Buffalo mozzarella and pancetta

Atomica pizza (sans black olives)

For all of you pizza experts out there, I made sure to get a pic of the "upskirt," or underside, of the pizza. It was nicely charred. In fact, as I noted before, the crust in general was really excellent - completely enjoyable on its own merits (aside from the toppings).

Atomica upskirt (Whee!)

As far as the service goes, it was competent, polite and efficient enough (in light of the fact that they were absolutely slammed), with each component of the meal brought to us by a different server. Mark did note that with the exception of one individual, all of them looked kind of miserable. I'll chalk it up to the fact that they were so busy, but it was a little disconcerting.

While I'm not sure it was worth the wait, I will say that Pizzeria Paradiso (kind of inconsistently) serves up some of the better pizzas in the District. I still like 2 Amys much better, but for great pizza without the hassle of schlepping to Upper Northwest, Pizzeria Paradiso will do in a pinch, especially if you go on a weekday night!

*Pizzeria Paradiso also has a location in Georgetown, at 3282 M Street, NW.

Lamb Chops, Cauliflower & Prosciutto-Wrapped Pears w/ Goat Cheese

2010-02-19T00:43:00.015-05:00

*Post by Mark.

Angela can be a busy young lady. When she's not working, marathon training, sleep-walking (oh, you have NO idea), or keeping up with an intense weekly DVR regiment (apparently Bones is 'must-watch TV'), she's usually cooking some extravagant meal for this guy's exclusive benefit. Now, I'm no stranger to the kitchen, but I usually step aside when it comes to the kitchen... no, I literally step aside. The kitchen comfortably fits 1/2 a normal sized person, which means it fits one Angela comfortably (Also, she's a total control-freak).

With her upcoming birthday and a strenuous recent workload and my fear of gradually becoming an easily replaceable component in this relationship, I decided tonight would be a good opportunity to nudge her aside, squeeze into the close-but-foreign quarters of the kitchen and make myself useful. Perhaps my apron-wearing hiatus made me antsy to push my culinary ventures, or perhaps I had a lot of reciprocating to do, but I settled on a menu that given my talents limitations, may have been a little... ambitious.

Click READ MORE to see what Mark cooked for Angela.

Sliced Pears Wrapped in Prosciutto with Goat Cheese and Arugula

I decided to start with a light appetizer. Rather than do a salad, I settled on a little hors d'oeuvre. I love a one-bite course that can combine a meat, a cheese AND a fruit. To begin, I cored two Anjou Pears (leaving me with 16 total wedges) and tossed them with lemon juice (the acidic juice keeps the sliced fruit from browning).

The great thing about this dish is that the complexity of flavor and texture layered into each bite is achieved with minimal effort. Once your pear is cored, the prosciutto, Goat Cheese (yes, I always capitalize Goat Cheese. It's the deity of dairy products) and arugula require zero preparation. Simply lay out a strip of prosciutto, place a pear wedge on it, then add a hunk of Goat Cheese and about two or three small arugula leaves.

Once you've got all the pieces in place, the wrapping is a cinch, concluded with a toothpick to pin it all together.

The result is a colorful and impressive little dish that tastes even better than it looks. Both Angela and I tore through these like hungry velociraptors devouring a small, helpless child.

Braised Cauliflower with Parsley & Bread Crumbs

As a side to the main course, I settled on cauliflower. It's typically a vegetable Angela overlooks. My meal? My vegetable. I used an entire head, cutting it into florets and set that aside.

To top off the vegetable, I'd be concocting a bread crumb mixture, so I started by cramming a baguette into a food processor.

Once the bread had been broken down into small enough pieces, I scattered them out on a tinfoil-wrapped (rimmed) baking sheet and covered the bits with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. I baked them at 400 for 6-7 minutes until they became golden and crispy. In the meantime, I was busy chopping up about 2 tablespoons of fresh parsley and spooning out about 2 tablespoons worth of capers.

Next, I shattered the jar full of capers on the floor. To do this, you'll have to precariously return the jar to an unsecured position on the refrigerator door (preferably the top shelf where you usually put margarine) so in a few moments when you give the door a good yank, the tall jar will undoubtedly fall and smash, causing you to overcook the bread crumbs while you try to collect shards of glass from the floor...

When I was finally able to remove the fully-cooked pieces of baguette, I combined it with the parsley and capers and set it aside.

To cook the cauliflower, I warmed a tablespoon of olive oil and about 1/3 cup of water in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil started to sizzle I added the cauliflower florets and covered, cooking (and occasionally stirring) for about 8 minutes.

When they were finished, I plated them and sprinkled the bread crumb, parsley, caper mixture generously over the top.

Roasted Lamb Chops

Now for the main course. I've never cooked lamb before, and rarely even eat it, so I took a simple approach for my first efforts. First I seasoned 4 shoulder blade chops with 1 teaspoon paprika and about 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt and pepper each.

Once the seasonings were all rubbed into the meat, I heated a tablespoon olive oil and some diced shallots for flavoring in a large frying pan.

I browned each lamb chop for about 2 minutes per side and then transfered them to a baking sheet cooking at 400 degrees in the oven.

After about 10 minutes in the oven they were cooked to a nice medium rare.

I plated the cauliflower and lamb chops together and Angela seemed a big fan. The lamb chops were rich with a nice subtle seasoning. They were cooked nicely throughout, so we can only chalk that up to beginners luck. She also declared that she was now officially a big fan of cauliflower, but I think I could do better than the bread crumb topping.

Sure, everything sounds fantastic, but there was one glaring problem with this dinner. Now that I'm 1/1 on successful meals, something might actually be expected from me...

Angela's take: I didn't just like dinner. I loved it. I will admit, even though I had faith Mark would do just fine in the kitchen, I was itching to get in there with him and "help out." He didn't need it. In fact, dinner was so good, I'm a little worried that now I'm replaceable. That being said, I cannot wait for the next Mark-prepared dinner...

Saigon Bistro

2010-02-18T08:59:00.005-05:00

Last night, Mark and I were just looking for a place for a quick, cheap dinner (we had been planning to go to Busboys & Poets, but found ourselves too cold and too lazy to venture that far) - and found it at Saigon Bistro, at 2153 P Street, just off Dupont Circle. The eatery was clean and bright, the service was fast and efficient, and we had a solid, inexpensive meal in under 45 minutes. I would definitely go back in the future for a hassle-free, satisfying meal.

Click below to see what we ate!

The restaurant started out on a good foot by offering both San Miguel beer (a product of the Philippines) on the drink menu and a huge bottle of sriracha sauce at every table. I'm not being biased here (at least not too biased) - I really like it. The beer, that is. I LOVE sriracha and sometimes put it on things it has no business being paired with. Anyway, San Miguel has a slight honey undertone to it that I enjoy.

We got an order of the Golden Fried Wontons to start. While they were nothing special, the appetizer was completely competent, not overly greasy.

Golden Fried Wontons

We also got an order of Spring Rolls, with ground pork and mixed vegetables. Again, nothing outstanding, but the filling was nicely seasoned, and more importantly, the rolls were served directly out of the fryer so they were piping hot (there are not many things worse than getting lukewarm fried food). Both appetizers came with a great dipping sauce (nuoc cham) that was sweet, spicy and a little vinegary, and which served as a great complement to the fried dishes.

Spring Rolls

For my entree, I had been really craving Phở, so I immediately zeroed in on the Special Beef Noodle Soup (Phở Đặc Biệt) with well-done brisket, rare beef and tripe, which came with a side of bean sprouts, sliced peppers, and a slice of lime. Don't be put off by the redness of the beef in the picture - it was so thinly sliced that the heat from the broth cooked it through after about 2 or 3 minutes. I thought it was pretty good - the meat was decent quality and flavorful. I would have preferred that the broth be a little more heavily seasoned (specifically, it could have used a heavier hand with the salt and a lot more heat), although the taste and aroma of the anise and cinnamon really came through. The dish's shortcomings were easily corrected by a generous squirt (or two...or five) of sriracha.

Special Beef Noodle Soup (Phở Đặc Biệt)

Mark got the beef broccoli (Bò Xào Bông Cải Xanh), which he liked a lot. The sauce was really rich and tangy, with a sweetness that he really enjoyed. His only complaint is that the rice had clearly been sitting around in the kitchen for awhile - I didn't have any, but could see that it was pretty dried out.

Beef broccoli (Bò Xào Bông Cải Xanh)

We walked out of the restaurant having paid just $45 (including two beers and tip!), satiated and ready to do some work. Make no mistake - Saigon Bistro is not fine dining. But it's not trying to be. Instead, it does what it does well - serves good, cheap Vietnamese food, bistro-style. Like I said, I can definitely see myself hitting this place again for a quick dinner, especially on a cold night.