Mixology with Beetology (sponsored)

Beetology beet-tini

Yeah, yeah, Halloween is for kids to dress up and go door-to-door to beg for candy. Maybe that's your thing, but I'd rather stay home with the lights out and drink. Or, more accurately, I'd rather pack up the pup, leave the neighborhood, and drink somewhere else. (My poor dog is traumatized by strangers at the door, and he is not fond of children. He is much like me.)

Beetology sent me some yummy samples (I LOVE BEETS! Yes, I am Polish.) and recipes to share. Beetology juices are 100% cold-pressed, which means the fruit and veg in their blends retain the bulk of their vital nutrients. And veggie nutrition balances out the booze, amirite? Well, it does in my head.

There are five flavors of Beetology: cherry; tropical fruit; lemon + ginger; berry; and veggie. Any one of them would be great in a Beet-ini with 4 ounces of juice and 2 ounces of vodka or gin. Garnish the veggie version with olives and the others with a lemon twist. The veggie flavor also works in a Bloody Mary. There are more drink recipes on the Beetology web site, plus hummus and chocolate cupcakes. (!)

Beety Mary

4 oz Beetology Beet + Veggie Juice

2 oz vodka

1 tsp prepared horseradish

2 dashes Tabasco sauce

2 dashes Worcestershire sauce

pinch smoked paprika

pinch black pepper

squeeze of lemon

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake to blend. Strain into a highball glass filled with ice. Garnish with a celery stick, some green olives, and a lemon wedge. If you're feeling it, add a slice of pickled beet.

Adult beverages with protein and fiber are a great idea, but it might be an even better idea to get your kids to drink Beetology (without the liquor, of course!). Just dress them up like vampires and tell them it's blood....

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Pen & Quill

Not all that long ago there weren't any good places to eat around the Charles Theater. (Before you start to argue, even the 80s doesn't seem all that long ago to me.) Once the theater expanded in the 90s, we got Tapas Teatro. Eventually Sofi's Crepes came along. And a couple of years ago the Cheapeake Restaurant re-opened to great fanfare after being closed for over two decades. And then it closed right back up again. Thankfully, Helmand Karzai, whose family owns Tapas Teatro, the Helmand, and b Bistro, came in to make the historic space really work. The new restaurant became Pen & Quill, after the original Chesapeake's cocktail bar. Helmand's wife Naomi became bar manager while her sister, Bella Kline, took over the kitchen as executive chef. These changes have made the northeast corner of Charles and Lanvale the place to be once again .

We were invited to partake of a media dinner to taste Chef Bella's food. Though young, she's got serious French technique and the creativity to pair it with unusual ingredients. Some of the items we tasted were on the winter menu, but there were also some dishes she was trying out for spring. No matter the season, all were enjoyable.

We started off in the lounge with three kinds of oysters on the half shell, accompanied by a charcuterie plate boasting a terrific house-made sausage of pork spiced merguez-style with cumin, coriander, and chiles. We continued our meal in the cute private dining room that would be perfect for a large family dinner or a small party.

The first course included house-made burrata, a mountain of mozzarella filled with mascarpone and cream. Marinated mushrooms cut the richness, and a thoughtful spoon of salt was included so diners could adjust seasoning to their liking. We thought it was perfect as is.

One of the dishes for spring is the hamachi crudo, a plate of clean flavors including radish, mango, serrano pepper, and avocado. The serrano and tuna are a match made in heaven, at least to The Minx's palate. This dish would be a refreshing choice for a warm day.

An example of Chef Kline's ability to mix classic technique with unusual ingredients is her dish of perfectly seared scallops accompanied by banana ketchup. While nobody in their right mind would put tomato ketchup anywhere near a scallop, the banana-forward sauce was only lightly sweet and added a nice taste of the tropics to this dish, which also boasted grilled scallions and a soy glaze. We also had a lovely dish of fried polenta with baba ganoush, fresh artichoke hearts, and marinated feta over baby greens. A salad yet not a salad, hearty but light, a dish sure to please most vegetarians.

Another vegetarian dish was the smoked beet reuben. It's is exactly what you would expect: the traditional elements of braised sauerkraut, Russian dressing, and Swiss cheese on grilled rye bread, but with smoked beets replacing the usual corned beef. It sounds strange, but somehow it works quite well. The Minx was crazy about it.

The beef tartare was unctuous and very fresh-tasting, served with soft brioche toasts and a broken gribiche (traditionally, a gribiche is a mayo-based sauce reminiscent of a remoulade or tartar sauce, but with hard cooked egg in place of raw egg). The chef's "everything" spices brought a great deal of flavor to the plate as well.

A creamy take on a green gazpacho included "all the green vegetables" and was delightfully smooth and flavorful.

We also tried the parsley Parisian gnocchi--bright green pillows of parsley and Parmesan goodness topped with Serrano ham. The green soubise was rich and possessed a strong onion flavor, which was reinforced by the addition of smoked Vidalia onion.

As if we weren't already quite full, we were presented with a lamb and garlic pie filled with vegetables and topped with a savory pepper crust. In addition to the tender lamb, it was fun to decipher the selection of veg inside, which included Brussels sprouts and potatoes. I love this kind of rustic cooking and found this to be my favorite dish of the meal.

We were really impressed with Bella Kline's dishes and are happy that the old Chesapeake Restaurant building is finally being put to good use. The bar looks like a fun place to hang out, and the drinks list includes local brews, a careful selection of wines, and some creative cocktails. We only tried a gingery Pimm's cup, but would love to go back for more. We'd also like to try Bella's steamed buns and amazing-looking fried chicken sandwich.

Pen & Quill
1701 N Charles St
Baltimore, MD 21202
(410) 601-3588
penandquill.net



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Dining In New York, May 2015, Part 1

It had been a year since I'd sniffed and eaten my way around New York, and high time I did it again. So I made arrangements to go up one Friday morning to check out as many restaurants and perfume counters I could squeeze into a quick 30 hours.

I planned to begin my scented tour in upper midtown, so I wanted to eat lunch in that neighborhood. Quality Meats is on 58th Street, just down the street from Bergdorf's. Despite being primarily a steakhouse, they had a number of interesting chopped salads on their luncheon menu. The salad varieties included classic, green goddess, roasted beet, Mediterranean, and Eastern (pan-Asian), all of which could be topped with one's choice from a list of proteins. I went with the roasted beet salad (baby beets, radicchio, frisee, arugula, and toasted walnut vinaigrette) with seared yellowfin tuna.

Arrestingly plated, the large portion of bitter greens and beets was topped with perfectly cooked tuna. While the salad itself could have used both more dressing and more seasoning (thankfully there was a tiny salt cellar on the table), I thought the tuna was nicely seasoned and appreciated the subtle hint of cumin.

I also tried a side of the restaurant's signature corn creme brulee. I had originally also planned to order ice cream for dessert, but the brulee was sweet enough to stand in for that course. Extremely rich and creamy, the generously-portioned custard was more cream than egg, and the burnt sugar topping added a pleasant bitterness.

Much later that evening, I found myself wandering through the West Village. Not having made a dinner reservation left my choices wide open...or as wide open as they can be at 7pm on a bustling Friday night. I remembered enjoying Harold Dieterle's Kin Shop on my last trip to NY; at that time Mr Minx and I sampled several outstanding items. A quick check of my OpenTable app revealed that the next available reservation wasn't until 10:30pm. Undeterred, I walked up 6th Avenue anyway to try my luck. I scored a seat at the bar where I enjoyed a fragrant Siamese Smash (Heaven Hill bourbon, calamansi, yuzu, lemon bitters, & thai basil) while perusing the menu.

I ended up ordering two appetizers. The first was a steamed peekytoe crab & spicy pork crepe in a coconut broth with chili oil and fresh herbs. The light rice flour crepe was wrapped around a sausage-like cylinder of pork and crab and set atop a gorgeous broth redolent of coconut and fish sauce. A side order of sticky rice was employed to soak up all of the delicious juices.

A special of crispy lamb ribs with a crab dipping sauce served as my entree. The four ribs were small but meaty, lightly crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. They were lightly seasoned, but when eaten with a bit of everything else on the plate--sauce, herbs, pickled onions--the flavor shone.

I find that eating alone at a bar can often be amusing. First I got a laugh from a guy showing off his brand new Apple watch...which refused to work in the restaurant. Money well spent. When he left, he was replaced by a Latino man with a very heavy accent. He seemed to think that Kin Shop was a garden variety Thai restaurant and that he could get pad Thai with chicken. If he couldn't get pad Thai with chicken, could he get something else with chicken? If he had examined the menu at all, rather than playing with his phone, he would have seen there was not a single chicken dish on the menu. Equally amusing was that the bartender, who doubled as our waiter, insisted that not only could he not get pad Thai with chicken, he could not get pad Thai. But pad Thai (with shrimp) was clearly available. (Perhaps not so clearly, as it was spelled "phat" Thai on the menu.)

After dinner, I walked in search of gelato. There are actually many places to get gelato in the neighborhood, but all of them had a line out to there. I stepped into Cones, on Bleecker Street, and opted for Argentine-style ice cream--helado--instead. Similar to gelato in that it has a lower fat and calorie count than American ice cream, helado is still decadently creamy. I enjoyed two flavors, sweet potato studded with bits of brie cheese, and corn, both richly sweet.

For sure, my sniffing adventures weren't nearly as satisfying as my eating adventures on this particular day.









Posted on Minxeats.com.

Spicy Smoky Beet Ketchup

I tell ya, even getting a small CSA box leaves one with a ton of veggies and fruits to use up before they go bad. Every time I open the crisper drawer, I spot something else that needs to be cooked. "Oh yeah - those Chioggia beets! I forgot all about them!" Mr Minx had cooked up the tops and combined them with organic kale, but left the root part for me. He's not a big fan of beets, and the three beets I was now staring at were enormous--no way I was going to eat them without assistance.

So I made ketchup. As with everything I cook, I think "why the hell not?" I've had mango ketchup and banana ketchup. Beets are sweet, too, and red. Like ketchup. Chioggia beets are pink though, so to up the color, I added balsamic vinegar. And, of course, brown sugar and spices. I always think ketchup tastes like cloves, but those little suckers are pungent. I didn't want to go overboard, so I just added a pinch. After tasting my concoction, I added a bit of smoked paprika and cayenne, for oomph. You can add more cayenne, if you want, but I thought a small amount was more prudent.

The texture, after pureeing, is rather thick and spoonable, rather than pourable. Heinz ain't got nothing on homemade.

We served the ketchup on lamb burgers, and it was really delicious. I think beet bbq sauce made with beet ketchup might be the next step.

Spicy, Smoky Beet Ketchup

2 cups chopped roasted beets
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1/8 teaspoon smoked paprika
Pinch ground cloves

Place the beets, garlic, and vinegars in a saucepan and stir to combine. Turn heat on to high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, until beets are tender. Stir in seasonings and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Puree mixture in a food processor or blender. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Makes about 1 1/2 cups.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Pink Sultan

That's a funny name for a dip, isn't it? Pink Sultan? Perhaps a little pompous? But it's a thing--a yogurt and beet concoction that is a typical Turkish mezze. Traditionally made with labne, a yogurt cheese, the dish can be quite thick, like the one we had at Bosphorus earlier this year.

Labne isn't exactly in every supermarket, and I didn't feel like waiting 24 hours to make my own (nor did I have any cheesecloth), so I just used plain, unstrained, Greek yogurt to turn the dish into a dip for crackers and crudites. One thing that can be found in most supermarkets is plain cooked beets. Use the ones found in the produce section, not in jars in the canned goods aisle. Two 1 1/2" - 2" beets should do the trick for 1 cup of yogurt. Season it up with garlic, a bit of lemon juice, and salt, and you have a tasty and different party snack. And it doesn't even really taste like beets.

If you do find labne, or have the patience to make your own, you can still use the same recipe. The labne will be spreadable rather than dippable, so serve it with some fresh pitas rather than crackers or veg.

Pink Sultan Dip

2 cooked beets, chopped
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 clove garlic, crushed
Squeeze lemon juice
Salt to taste

Combine ingredients in a food processor until well-blended. Serve with pita, crackers, or crudites.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Beet Salad

For some, beets are an acquired taste. I, however, grew up eating them. My Grandma's beet barszcz was one of my favorite foods, and I never turned up my nose to jarred pickled beets. But red beets have that distinctive earthy flavor that can be hard for some to take. Other colors of beets can be milder - I've had orange beets that were as naturally sweet as candy, without the dirt flavor. The same goes for chioggia beets.

When raw, chioggias have alternating red and white concentric rings (which earned them the nickname "candy stripe" beets). Cooking turns them a fairly uniform medium fuchsia-pink. Their flavor is sweet and fruity, with little of the dirt earthiness of standard red beets. (Your palate may vary.)

The sweetness of beets makes them a perfect pairing for salty and tangy flavors, like vinegar, mustard, feta cheese, and olives, and an ideal salad ingredient. I like to add toasted walnuts, too, for a bit of buttery crunch.

Chioggia Beet Salad

2 beets, 2" - 3" in diameter, tops removed
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard
generous pinch of salt
pinch garlic powder
pinch ground cumin
pinch ground paprika
4 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
greens of your choice (arugula is nice, but so is plain old romaine)
feta cheese
green or black olives
toasted walnuts
fresh dill and mint (optional, but nice)

Scrub any dirt off the beets and place them in a saucepan with water to cover. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the beets are easily pierced with a knife. Turn off heat, remove beets from water, and allow to cool to a temperature comfortable enough to handle. Peel off and discard the skins. Slice the beets.

Place the orange juice, vinegar, mustard, and salt into a small bowl and beat well with a fork. Add the spices and beat again. Drizzle in the olive oil, beating constantly, until the ingredients are emulsified. Taste for seasoning and add more of whatever you think it needs. If you prefer a sweeter vinaigrette, whisk in a few drops of honey or agave syrup.

For each serving, place a handful of greens on a serving plate. Top with half the beets. Drizzle with a few spoonfuls of the dressing (whisk again if it has un-emulsified). Top with crumbles of feta, some sliced olives, pieces of walnut, and dill and mint.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Rocket to Venus

Mr Minx and I tend to go to the same restaurants over and over again, getting stuck in a favorite rut. While that's not a bad thing exactly, it's not something a food blogger wants to practice, particularly when there are so many places out there that we haven't yet tried. Last weekend, we checked out one of those places, Hampden's Rocket to Venus.

Richard Gorelick's 2007 CityPaper review made Rocket to Venus sound like a hip joint with good food. In 2011, I'm wondering what happened to that place.

Upon walking into the restaurant, I was immediately struck by the smell. Outside, the air was perfumed by fried onions, but inside, the dark room was full of a somewhat disturbing odor that was a cross between a barnyard and a sex shop (don't ask me how I know what a sex shop smells like). After several minutes, I got used to it, but hoped the source wasn't the kitchen.

After the hostess led us to our table against the interior wall of the restaurant, I had a look around. The odd oval windows filled in with glass blocks that ran along the opposite wall in the dark, somewhat depressing, industrial-green-and-black dining room seemed like portholes in an underwater dungeon. The bar and several tables were occupied by an assortment of folks: a young, tattooed couple with an infant; random hipsters in black; some hard-drinking types; a table of older women, one appearing to have just performed as the Artful Dodger in a matinée of Oliver. Our black-clad waiter reminded me of fellow students from my Maryland Institute days in his skinny jeans and rat's nest of hair.

I had chosen to eat at Rocket to Venus because the offerings on their Web menu seemed quirky and appealing. I was especially interested in the kimchee pierogies, the roasted Brussels sprouts, and the award-winning banh mi sandwich. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, and even at 6pm we were given a much-less-interesting brunch menu that included none of those things.

As we perused the somewhat disappointing menu, we were serenaded by the dulcet tones of Van Halen and AC-DC. After a few minutes, Mr Minx decided on the chicken and waffles, primarily because it seemed to make sense to have pulled chicken, rather than battered and fried whole pieces, on a waffle. "Pulled chicken" evoked "pulled pork" so we envisioned a bit of barely-gravy-moistened meat on a crisp waffle; instead, what arrived was more like a stew, one that completely swamped the waffle at the bottom of the bowl. It could have been a kitchen sponge, for all we knew. The container of syrup on the side was completely superfluous, as the dish needed no more moisture, and the sweetness would have seemed out of place with the gravy, which tasted of brown. Despite the unappealing gravy and waffle, we enjoyed the generous portion of tender chicken.

I'm a sucker for the now-ubiquitous beet salad and thought Rocket to Venus' version sounded good, "red beet, candied walnut, orange segment and feta tossed in light sherry reduction and extra virgin olive oil, served over watercress."  It also sounded like it would be prettier than it was. The uneven chunks of beet demonstrated a lack of knife skills in the kitchen, I tasted no dressing, and the only seasoning came from the salt of the feta, which served more to make the salad look dirty than to add any real flavor. The single branch of watercress under the beets included a large piece of tough stem. On the positive side were the generous portion of properly-cooked beets, and the candied walnuts.

This was the way the salad came out of the kitchen, although
it looks like I've already started eating.

I also tried a plate of hot wings, which weren't particularly hot, but were a solid, traditional rendition, with a nice crispy skin and a Frank's-style sauce. They came with a side of "smoked habanero ranch" that could have been chipotle for I all knew, since it didn't pack much heat, but it was good, particularly when I dipped my otherwise unseasoned beets into it. In fact, if I could redesign my salad, I would drizzle the ranch sauce on the plate and top it with sliced beets and a handful of baby arugula or watercress leaves tossed in a light lemon vinaigrette. Hold the cheese, extra walnuts, please.

Service was fine, the food was hot, filling, and cheap, parking was easy to find, so even though the food was meh this time around, I'm likely to give Rocket to Venus another try, on a weeknight. For banh mi, and fried pickles.

Rocket to Venus
3360 Chestnut Ave
Baltimore, MD 21211
410) 235-7887

Ze Mean Bean

I grew up in a Polish-American family, speaking Polish and eating Polish food. My grandmother was 39 when my mother was born, and my mother was a few weeks shy of 30 when I made my appearance in the world. That meant by the time I came along, for the most part, Grandma's days of cooking were behind her. No more home-made pierogi (ravioli-like dumplings), pączki (donuts), or krusciki (bow-tie cookies). But, she still made some things: soups like barszcz (borcht), szczaw (sorrel soup), and rosół (chicken soup); placki (potato pancakes); for the holidays there was always kapusta i kielbasy (sauerkraut and fresh Polish sausage); and when I was very small there were gołąbki (stuffed cabbage). Eventually, that became too labor-intensive, and Grandma didn't like to have "help" when she was in the kitchen. She grated every beet and potato herself, despite having four other adults in the house. For this reason, her recipes didn't get passed down from generation to generation and I have none.

Grandma's been gone since the mid-90s and I still make the occasional traditional Easter meal (throwing Ostrowski's kielbasa and some sauerkraut into a pot doesn't require a recipe), but it's rare that I get to eat good Polish food. About the only place in town that serves something from my memories is Ze Mean Bean Cafe, in Fells Point. I try to get there at least once a year with friends of mine from out of town, fellow Slavs. This year I remembered to take photographs.

We started off with the hriby dip, a mixture of mushrooms, sour cream, and Gruyere, served warm with toast. We fought over every last creamy, mushroomy bit. (I do not have photographic evidence, but there was even some not-so-clandestine bowl-licking going on.)

Next we had a round of borcht, a pretty similar recipe to Grandma's barszcz, but with the addition of carrots (my grandmother used beets only). It was good, but not as good as it has been in the past, which made me sad. It was usually the one thing that most took me back to my childhood, and this bowl's shortcomings were almost physically painful.

We tried two salads, this one with mache in a porcini vinaigrette accompanied by a raw beet and dried currant salad...

...and this salad with massive walnut halves and blackberries, chunks of Roquefort, and a cognac vinaigrette. Both were very nice, particularly the shredded beets in the salad above, and the luscious cheese in the one below.

On to the "Slavic Sampler" with cured kielbasa (which I had never eaten as a child and always have thought of it as an impostor, like an Eckrich or Hillshire Farms product), pierogi, holupki (a.k.a. gołąbki), and placki with home-made applesauce. I will admit that the kielbasa had nice texture and flavor, despite not being what I had eaten my entire life. The holupki were generously stuffed with rice and meat and had a particularly flavorful tomato sauce topping that might have been better than Grandma's, had I been able to remember back some 40 years.

We also ordered extra pierogi, because one can never have too many. ZMB's were fried until crisp on the outside and served with onions. The fillings were sauerkraut, farmer's cheese, and potato; my fave were the cheese, which had just the right amount of sweet and savory.

This is holushki, a Ukrainian dish of little dumplings, served with cabbage, asparagus, and roasted red pepper. A decidedly non-traditional preparation, but pretty darn good.

Finally, we had to have coffee and dessert. After all, ZMB had started out as a coffee house with home-baked desserts by the owner's mother. She still bakes them today. Here's her cinnamon babka:

and chocolate babka:

Both were more cake-like than Babka should be, particularly the cinnamon version. Too moist, but it tasted good so I'll stop complaining.

This is a caramel apple pie....

...and finally we had apple cake with cream cheese frosting.

While all of the desserts were good, I would have preferred something more classic, like makowiec (poppy seed cake), sernik (cheese cake), or krusciki. But...I guess not all ZMB customers would want to go "full Slav."

So while some things were a little disappointing, the hriby dip was as good as ever and the holupki were better than I remembered. The best part about the meal, however, was the company. Thanks, Ladies. See you next year (but hopefully sooner)!

Ze Mean Bean
1739 Fleet St
Baltimore, MD 21231
(410) 675-5999