Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Eats’ Category

Fancy eggplants call for a new recipe

Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2012| 4 Comments »

Don’t let the name of her blog fool you: Kristen over at Crafty Kristen has a heck of a green thumb in addition to mad knitting skills.

She gifted me with a couple of bags filled with goodies from her garden recently as she was preparing to go spend a few days at the beach with her husband. I brought home yellow pear tomatoes (sweet and delicious), cherry tomatoes and eggplants.

Totally exotic eggplants.

The only eggplant I’m familiar with is the big purple one. I remember seeing them when I was a kid, although I don’t recall whether my grandparents grew them, and I don’t remember ever eating them until I tried the ever popular eggplant Parmesan in college. I certainly never cooked an eggplant myself.

So when a CSA box arrived a couple of years ago with an eggplant inside, I faced a quandary. I made a baked version of eggplant Parmesan first — it was delicious, but not quite delicious enough to make up for the time it required and the mess it made.

I finally found an easier eggplant pasta sauce recipe with a complex, garlicky flavor. It took care of the huge purple eggplants in the CSA box, and made enough that I had leftovers for at least a couple of days.

Pre-eggplant season, Kristen had recommended a recipe for Pasta alla Norma, which I tucked away on Pinterest in anticipation of this year’s first CSA box.

When she handed me a small plastic bag filled with the fanciest eggplants I had ever seen, I knew I couldn’t simply smash them into the gray (yet tasty) pulp resulting from my go-to eggplant pasta sauce recipe.

So I broke out the pasta alla Norma recipe, only to discover three problems:

  • It called for ricotta salata cheese, which I wasn’t entirely sure I could find at Publix.
  • It called for deep-frying the eggplant, while I’m really more of a “lightly sauté” kind of girl.
  • It called for sautéed onions WITHOUT sautéed garlic. Say what now?

I made a few simple changes to the recipe and was psyched about the results. The sauce is very light, but the eggplant makes it filling. I found it made enough for two servings (I only cooked 2.5 ounces of penne rigate), with enough left over for lunch (no pasta, just the chunky sauce).

You have to judge how much basil, eggplant and Parmesan cheese to use. If you want a heartier sauce, use more eggplant. Need more basil flavor? Tear up a few more basil leaves. It’s a forgiving recipe.

Pasta alla Norma

Makes about 3 servings

(Adapted from David Rocco’s recipe)

  • 2.5 oz. penne rigate pasta
  • olive oil
  • 1/2 white onion, chopped
  • 14 oz. diced tomatoes
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  • 1 medium-sized eggplant (or a few small eggplants), cubed
  • fresh basil leaves, torn
  • Parmesan cheese

Cook the penne in a pot of boiling salted water, stirring to prevent it from sticking together. While the pasta is cooking, make the sauce.

In a saucepan, heat up a tablespoons of olive oil. Gently sauté onions until tender, then add undrained tomatoes. With the back of a wooden spoon, break up the tomatoes into small chunks.

Add salt and pepper. Cook for a few minutes until the sauce has thickened.

In another pan, sauté the eggplant in olive oil until golden. Add the sautéed eggplant and basil leaves to the sauce, and stir in a few sprinkles of Parmesan.

Plate the servings of pasta and spoon sauce on top. Sprinkle with more Parmesan, if desired, and serve immediately.

Read Full Post »

Dine & Dash: Scoping out the good, the bad and the meh of downtown Huntsville

Posted in Eats, Huntsville, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Last week, I finally got around to trying Homegrown Huntsville’s Dine & Dash, a fun take on the progressive dinner concept. Head to a downtown spot, have a bite to eat and a cocktail and board a trolley to the next spot — no worries about parking or reservations.

For only $30, you can sample specialties from five different downtown Huntsville bars and restaurants. (Only you really can’t, because there are no more Dine and Dashes scheduled past September and the two upcoming events are sold out. Check back with Homegrown Huntsville, though. They’re trying to schedule more.)

It’s a great way to try those downtown establishments you’ve been meaning to get to, and it’s a fantastic activity for a group of friends (I went with five other people).

The July 12 event was a signature drink and appetizer tasting. I learned that the word “signature” is not defined the same way by everyone and that my tolerance for smoke-filled rooms has been dramatically lowered by the preponderance of smoke-free establishments in Madison and Huntsville.

I found one spot (Amendment XXI) that definitely merits a return trip, another that I may visit when I’m feeling plush (Ruth’s Chris), a bar that I would probably enjoy with the right friends (Voodoo Lounge), and two popular spots that seem entirely overrated (Furniture Factory and Kaffeeklatsch).

Here’s a rundown of the places we tried, in the order that we visited them:

    • Ruth’s Chris, as expected, proved to be the classiest stop on the tour. The waitstaff was obviously ready to impress us, and the kitchen put out two delicious appetizers: miniature crabtinis and tenderloin with Béarnaise sauce and rolls. The crabtini was simply a crab salad served in a chilled martini glass — even our miniature samples featured a generous portion of lump crabmeat tossed with a house vinaigrette and topped with a bit of remoulade sauce.

      Ruth’s Chris signature cocktail offering wasn’t a cocktail at all; instead, a server offered diners their choice of a couple of wines. I’m not one to turn down a wine tasting, so I sampled both.

    • The next stop was Amendment XXI, a downtown bar known for its handcrafted cocktails and ambiance. The hostess gathered us in the private room upstairs and immediately introduced us to the Strawberry Mule, a delicious combination of Absolut Citron, fresh strawberry, lime juice and ginger. Our appetizer here was a small cup of some sort of cracker/pretzel mix; the hostess explained that Amendment XXI doesn’t really have a kitchen, and instead offers foods picked up from other downtown spots such as Sam and Greg’s, Humphrey’s, Jefferson St. Pub and Mickey’s. Fair enough.

      We were treated to another signature cocktail so new that it’s not even on the menu yet, leaving me to admit that I completely forgot its name. It was tasty, however.

      Pro tip: Just drink whatever the Amendment XXI bartenders recommend.  You won’t be sorry.

    • The Voodoo Lounge was, as I had been warned, a tiny but enchanting bar. The hostess served us a small cup filled with a peachy cocktail and followed up with a sampling of the bar’s appetizer offerings: a small bite of fried chicken with a honey-based sauce (I think) and a spicy chicken wing. The chicken wing was so spicy that one table filled with our trolley cohorts offered theirs to anybody who could stomach them (I demurred, even though I found them perfectly edible).

      After about 10 minutes in the Voodoo Lounge, a little more than half of our party made their way to the stairs to escape the underground space. The combination of heat and the remnants of heavy cigarette smoke (the ceilings are about 8 feet tall) quickly began to make the lounge a little less enchanting.

    • The famed Furniture Factory just didn’t seem to try very hard at all. We were ushered onto a crowded back patio (apparently our gathering was slated for the uncovered patio in back, but, alas, it RAINED in Alabama, you guys). Seriously, it was standing room only back there. Quite a few dine-and-dashers invaded what appeared to be a private dining room, where we were offered appetizers. Several of us darted back outside to bring back glasses of an unidentified blue-green beverage.

      If these samples were Furniture Factory’s signature offerings, then I definitely will not be returning. The three lukewarm appetizers consisted of fried jalapeno slices, fried mushrooms and what’s I’m guessing were taquitos (also fried, it’s safe to assume). The mushrooms were passable, the jalapeno slices were too spicy to judge and the taquitos were simply the worst thing I had all night. I have no evidence to indicate that the taquitos didn’t come straight out of the freezer case of the restaurant supply store (heck, I could buy the same thing at Sam’s Wholesale).

      The drink, while non-offensive, was also nondescript. It looked like mouthwash and tasted like … melon liqueur, with a bit of sour flavoring added? Not terrible, but not what I would call a signature drink, either.

    • The Kaffeeklatsch proved uninspiring, even if it was less crowded than the Furniture Factory, but at least the great Kaffeeklatsch mystery was finally solved for me: It’s a coffee store AND a bar. This explains the coffee supplies that can be seen from the front window AND the constant late-night activity listings.

      One member of our party, dreading the combined odor of coffee and cigarette smoke, left us behind in search of gelato at Sam & Greg’s. He needn’t have feared, however, for there was no hint of coffee aroma to be found on the bar side of the Kaffeeklatsch, only the stale remnants of cigarette smoke.The hostess gave us a brief history of the coffee store and bar, and proceeded to introduce our signature goodies: sangria and a “savory bread pudding.”

      Again, either the proprietors misunderstood the meaning of the word “signature,” or there’s simply nothing that interesting behind the Kaffeeklatsch bar. The sangria was a bland mishmash of fruit flavors, complete with anemic-looking strawberries and utterly lacking any noticeable trace of wine. The “savory bread pudding” was a lukewarm miniature muffin, again notable only for its blandness.

The tour hostesses were engaging and helpful, plying us with Fred Bread as we trolleyed from spot to spot and keeping us updated on the night’s scheduling.

The only ding on the entire operation was the condition of one of the trolleys; what came to be known among our group as Moldy Trolley was leaking (it was one of the summer’s rainier nights). This wasn’t the first leaky night for this trolley, however, because some of the interior wood was warped and there was a distinctive mildew odor in the back area.

Provided Moldy Trolley makes it through the next couple of months intact, I’ll be on the lookout for more Dine & Dash events. It really is a fun and innovative way to test-drive downtown Huntsville’s slew of interesting bars and restaurants.

Read Full Post »

Second CSA box yields a colorful harvest

Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , on July 9, 2012| 2 Comments »

Cucumbers, squash, lemon cucumbers, green tomatoes, more squash (sigh) and red noodle beans.

This week’s CSA box was heavy with a little bit of everything.

I faced two unfamiliar items: lemon cucumbers and red noodle beans. The lemon cucumbers are round and a little sweeter than other varieties, and the red noodle beans were tasty but weird.

I riffed on this recipe for Red Noodle Beans with Cracked Black Pepper, only I didn’t have any soy sauce, and I forgot that I just received a couple of bell peppers, so I pretty much just sautéed them in olive oil with diced onion and garlic for about 10 minutes. They tasted like string beans, more or less, except they were squeaky, like cheese curds.

Like I said, tasty but weird.

The box also contained one lone cherry tomato, only I thought I saw two cherry tomatoes, so I ate it expecting to dig the other one out for the husband in a few minutes. Alas, no. I scarfed down the only one. Lucky for me, he’s the forgiving type, and he doesn’t have the same extreme craving for homegrown tomatoes that I do.

Sweet onion, bell peppers, basil, the biggest eggplant I’ve ever had and various hot peppers.

Read Full Post »

Sautéed peas end tradition of salty, mushy vegetables

Posted in Cats, CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2012| 1 Comment »

I was excited and a little leery when I found a bagful of fresh English peas in my latest CSA box.

As confirmed by my CSA representative, English peas are extremely sensitive to hot weather, so they would have never had a chance on my grandparents’ farm in South Mississippi. Therefore, the only English peas I’ve ever eaten have come straight out of the can, slightly mushy and pretty bland. Meh.

Since the record-breaking heat in North Alabama/South Tennessee was making it clear that this would be the only fresh English peas I would get this year, I knew I had to make the most of them.

I don’t mean this as an insult to my Southern ancestry, but at some point cooks in the South started boiling vegetables into a salty mush. I remember the first time I ever had a string bean that had been briefly steamed, and thus still held a bit of natural sweetness and a light crunch. (Truly, it would have been considered underdone at my grandmother’s house.) Corn on the cob became a whole new experience for me when I discovered that I could simply wrap individual ears in waxed paper and microwave them for a few minutes, leaving sweet and crunchy kernels that needed neither salt nor butter.

I was determined not to turn these peas into mush.

I found inspiration at Williams-Sonoma’s website: Sautéed English Peas with Garlic and Sesame. Unfortunately, I didn’t have sesame seeds or sesame oil in my pantry, so I had to wing it. I also don’t know how many pounds of peas I started with; Williams-Sonoma recommended two garlic cloves for 3 pounds of unshelled English peas. Do the math for the amount of peas you have, or just use a couple of cloves of garlic.

There are few vegetable recipes that wouldn’t be made better with a couple of cloves of garlic.

The husband was at first stunned by the color of the peas when I removed the lid from the pan; the short cooking time had left the peas a brilliant green. The texture was magnificent; they weren’t crunchy or chewy, but they weren’t mushy either. The garlic flavor burst through with every bite, but not in an overwhelming way.

Sautéed English Peas with Garlic

  • Fresh English peas, shelled
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • Pinch of sea salt
  • Pinch of freshly ground pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a large bowl 2/3 full with ice water. Add the peas to the boiling water and cook for 3 minutes. Drain the peas and immediately plunge them into the ice water. Let stand for two minutes and drain.

In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil. Add the garlic and sauté, stirring constantly, until it is fragrant but not brown, about 30 seconds.

Add the peas, salt and pepper, and sauté, tossing and stirring occasionally, until the peas are just tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Serve immediately.

****************

Yang hasn’t given up his photobombing duties; here, he inspects the bowl of English peas mid-shoot.

Read Full Post »

As Pictured Below: Veggie cat

Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , on June 22, 2012| 4 Comments »

Yang, simply exhausted from all the sniffing.

My first CSA delivery of the summer yielded quite a spread, including cucumbers, jalapenos, onions, leeks, basil, squash, greens, strawberries, English peas and Roma beans.

As I unloaded the goods, I recalled how Yin used to closely inspect every CSA haul — it was nearly impossible to set up a picture of vegetables without a cat in the frame.

Yin, very serious about his vegetable inspection duties.

Not 30 seconds later, Yang strolled over and resumed Yin’s inspection and photobombing duties. He spent nearly five minutes sniffing every square inch of plant material, nipped at the Chinese cabbage and finally plopped down right on top of the Yukina savoy.

He was in every photograph, just like his brother.

Cats. They know comedy.

Read Full Post »

As Pictured Below: Birthday indulgence

Posted in As Pictured Below, Eats, Photographs, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 21, 2012| 4 Comments »

Clockwise, from top left: Valrhona Chocolate, Strawberry, Tres Leches and Carrot Cake.

Where does one kick off an Entirely Adequate 40th birthday?

The Doughnut Plant on the Lower East Side, of course.

The Valrhona Chocolate doughnut is part of my standard Doughnut Plant order now, and the carrot cake doughnut merits repeat business, even though it’s almost too rich for breakfast (alas, I persevere). The husband and I split the strawberry and chocolate treats (it’s always a good idea to order the store’s seasonal doughnut variety), and I left the Tres Leches, also a richer-than-rich indulgence, all for him.

Bonus: Doughnut Plant founder Mark Isreal sang “Happy Birthday” to me and delivered a Creme Brulee doughnut fresh from the kitchen after my husband spotted him and revealed my secret. This doughnut was better than the best creme brulee I’ve ever eaten; it was light, filled with the perfect amount of filling and mercifully small.

Forget breakfast in bed. I’d like all my future birthdays to feature a walk through Chinatown and a couple of choice Doughnut Plant treats. Owner singing optional.

Read Full Post »

Grownup task leads to childhood delicacy

Posted in Eats, Huntsville, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Photo courtesy of Atkinson Candy Company

The best part about serving two days of jury duty in Madison County, Alabama? I found a source of Chick-O-Sticks.

Chick-O-Sticks, for the terribly undersnacked, are orange sticks mostly made of peanut butter, granulated sugar and corn syrup. Dusted with ground coconut, they taste like the orange insides of a Butterfinger, for lack of a better comparison.

They’re crunchy and delicious, and they used to be much more widely available. Lately, they seem to only pop up in small, locally owned grocery stories and Mississippi gas stations.

You’ll find the large, cigar-shaped variety of Chick-O-Sticks in downtown Huntsville across from the courthouse at Harrison Brothers Hardware, which is part museum, part store. They’re displayed with a bunch of other old-fashioned snacks, including MoonPies and Necco Wafers.

I’m excited to see that the Atkinson Candy Company is still making Chick-O-Sticks in a variety of sizes and packaging options; hopefully that means they’ll be around for a while. Because there’s nothing like a taste of childhood on a hot summer day.

Read Full Post »

As Pictured Below: Elvis would be proud

Posted in As Pictured Below, Eats, Photographs, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

When I tell people that I’m traveling to New York City, they inevitably ask if I’m going to see a show. Apparently I’m supposed to hit up Broadway every time.

Instead of a list of must-see shows, however, I have a list of must-eat foods. Thanks to a reading habit that includes a lot of New York-centric publications (Serious Eats New York, the New Yorker, Time Out New York and the New York Times, among other random finds), I never get to check everything off the ever-expanding list. Also, there’s only so much food that the husband and I can eat in three to four days no matter how many subway stairs we climb.

On our latest trip, my great find was Melt Bakery, which makes some fabulous ice cream sandwiches. I stumbled on the Melt stand at the Hester Street Fair, an event that I suggested we attend because it was just a few blocks from our hotel and I knew that it featured at least one culinary treasure that I simply had to try. I just couldn’t remember which one.

After we each enjoyed a meatball slider from Mighty Balls, we split an Elvis from Melt — banana ice cream on peanut butter cookies. It was the freezer attendant’s favorite flavor, and the husband has a thing for peanut butter, so it was the obvious choice.

Delicious. The folks at Melt have somehow produced a cookie that doesn’t harden into a rocky, crumbly mess in the freezer, and their homemade ice cream isn’t the frozen-solid puck that it resembles.

Each bite — firm but not tough, creamy but not prone to quick melting — was a delicate combination of peanut butter and banana. Neither flavor overwhelmed the other, and it was just big enough for two people post-lunch. I think Elvis would approve of this treat, despite its blatant lack of bacon.

So, don’t weep for my lack of Broadway attendance. Instead, celebrate one more delicious delicacy checked off my list.

Read Full Post »

Simply irresistible: Improved goat cheese balls get rave reviews

Posted in Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Late last week, I realized that I had never posted about my improvements to the recipe for Goat Cheese Pops with Herbs, Pecans and Bacon after I began experimenting with it last fall.

The worst part of this realization? The knowledge that the only record I had of said improvements was a marked-up piece of paper residing in either the kitchen (on a very busy cookbook shelf) or in my home office (a treasure trove of unsorted grad school stuff).

Luckily, the printout was right where I had sort of hoped that I left it, on the left corner of my filing cabinet in a short stack of unrelated papers.

Whew. Because these cheese balls drew rave reviews at a party this weekend.

I totally amped up the goat cheese from what the original recipe called for, resulting in a much bolder flavor. Although I also increased the measurements of the coating ingredients to account for more cheese balls (this recipe makes about 50 percent more than the original), I still find myself running short on coating when I have anywhere from five to 10 cheese balls left uncovered.

There are worse things than having five to 10 uncovered goat cheese balls awaiting you in the fridge, however.

Simply Irresistible Goat Cheese Balls
Makes 30-45

  • 9 slices bacon
  • 8 oz. goat cheese
  • 4 oz. cream cheese (not whipped)
  • 3 tbsp. chopped basil (divided)
  • Cracked black pepper
  • 1/2 cup pecans

Cook bacon until crispy. Place cooked bacon on a plate lined with paper towel and pat to remove excess grease.

Place the goat cheese, cream cheese, 1.5 tbsp. basil and a few twists of cracked black pepper in the food processor. Process until creamy and well-mixed.

Form the cheese mixture into small balls, about the size of the tip of your thumb. (Use food-safe gloves and avoid cleaning cheese out from under your fingernails later.) Place the cheese balls in the freezer for 10-15 minutes; you want them to firm up, but you don’t want to freeze them all the way.

Clean out the food processor (or use your second, smaller food processor). Crumble in the cooled bacon and add the remaining basil and the pecans. Process until the mixture is very fine and crumbly. Roll the cheese balls in the bacon mixture, pressing to lightly embed the coating into each cheese ball. (Again, break out the gloves unless you enjoy bacon shrapnel under your nails.)

Refrigerate until ready to serve. (I’ve always made these the day before serving due to time constraints — they’re fine, if not a little better, the day after.) Serve alongside toothpicks or stick the toothpicks in before placing the cheese balls on a serving platter.

Read Full Post »

Pied Piper Creamery worth the wait — and a return visit

Posted in Eats, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

If I’m not planning my vacation around doughnuts, then you can bet that I’ve got my eye on a good ice cream place or two. Jake’s Ice Cream in Atlanta, for example, or the Shake Shack in Manhattan (actually, TONS of ice cream places in Manhattan — I never have enough time to visit all the places on my list and they just keep opening) — you name a city, I’ll find an ice cream place that you should try.

I had been trying to get to the Pied Piper Creamery in Nashville for a couple of years now, but always seemed to be in a rush to return home or to get somewhere else in Nashville, which, BTW, has topped Atlanta as my least-favorite city to drive around in. We never seemed to make it to the right part of town, which is a shame because East Nashville’s Five Points District is really awesome, and possibly my favorite part of Nashville given its lack of the touristy junk that pervades downtown.

Back to ice cream. After a quick lunch at the 3 Crow Bar (which turned a simple BLT into an unforgettable BLTEA with the addition of sliced boiled eggs and avocado), we took a detour before heading back to the car. Half a block down, I spotted the Pied Piper Creamery and I’m pretty sure I stopped, gasped and pointed. I was a little full for ice cream, but I WAS NOT about to miss out on this surprise discovery.

The husband agreed to split a small cup with me. This upped the pressure, since I could choose only ONE flavor.

I passed up the ever-famous Trailer Trash (vanilla with Oreo, Twix, Butterfinger, Nestle Crunch, Snickers, M&Ms, and Reese’s Pieces). I managed to avoid the siren call of the weird flavors, such as We Can Pickle That (dill pickle sorbet). I didn’t want to go too pedestrian, however, and I had been craving banana pudding since reading about Miss Lily’s Banana Pudding last week, so I chose the Banana Fanna Fo Fudding (banana pudding ice cream with vanilla wafers).

It was exquisitely creamy, filled with just the right ratio of bananas to vanilla wafers. Both the bananas and wafers held their textures well, especially considering the tendency of bananas to get slimy and wafers to get soggy when immersed in pudding. The banana flavor was distinct, but it was definitely not the overwhelming artificial banana flavor found in so many fruit-flavored foods.

The small cup was about $2.50, and it would have been enough for one person had that one person not just eaten a BLTEA wrap and a small bag of kettle chips all by herself.

I’m already planning my return trip, because sometimes the Pied Piper Creamery has a flavor called Ziggy Starcrunch (chocolate with Little Debbie Star Crunch pieces and a caramel swirl), and if you talk with me about food for more than 15 minutes you’ll probably find out why I call myself the Forrest Gump of Little Debbie products and you’ll also know why I simply have to try this flavor.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »