B&O Brasserie Spring Menu

When Chef Scott Hines took over from his predecessor Mike Ransom, there was a bit of a transitional period in terms of the B&O Brasserie menu. With the new spring menu, Chef Hines has revamped the entire lineup. focusing on familiar favorites with sophisticated refinements and getting back to the true mission of a brasserie. To that end, you will find the burgers, steaks, and salads that you would expect in a brasserie alongside more adventurous items like sweetbreads and quail. Also, the daily specials--fried chicken, pot roast, meatloaf--have a homey quality that should attract diners looking for comfort foods.

We were excited to get an opportunity to try out some of the new offerings.

Of course, we always have to start with an exotic cocktail from the wildly creative mixologist Brendon Dorr and his crew. Rabbit's Revenge, with flavors of gin, carrot, and beet, is reminiscent of a Bloody Mary, and would be lovely with a big fat shrimp or two perched on the rim. The Rook's Return is a refreshing cocktail using Ford's Gin; it reminded us of pickle brine with a floral aspect. That description might turn some people off, but it's actually delicious.

I certainly experienced a flash of nostalgia when I ate the salmon tartare. It reminded me a bit of the salmon mousse that my Aunt Kay always served for holiday parties. While salmon mousse is typically made with canned salmon, the tartare, a simple yet elevated dish, is made with fresh raw salmon mixed with tiger sauce (mayo and horseradish). The feather-weight, crispy salt and pepper crackers provide the perfect vehicle for the tartare. Even the Minx liked it and she is not a fan of raw salmon.

For some reason that escapes us, many people are turned off by sweetbreads. I think it's just the idea of eating the glands of an animal, but going on taste alone, they are tender and mild. (The Minx likes to think that the phrase "tastes like chicken" came about because of sweetbreads.) At the B&O, they are drizzled with a completely unexpected ancho and bourbon barbeque sauce with some straight-off-the-grill smokiness. The dish also has a scallion cornbread for a contrasting texture.

Chef Hines's sous chef Tyler Johnson once worked at Wolfgang Puck's Italian restaurant, so he has quite a few tricks up his sleeve when it comes to Italian cooking. He has strong influence over the pastas and sauces at the B & O and his rich Sunday gravy is excellent. It has great depth of flavor, as if Grandma was cooking it all day, and is the perfect accompaniment to the tender beef, mortadella, and foie gras meatballs. Now it might seem odd to add fancy bologna and duck liver to meatballs, and I couldn't really taste them specifically. They're mostly there to add unctuousness. The Minx was all over this dish and would love to make it at home.

The lamb rib appetizer is braised in gin for a long time, and the constant reduction of the sauce coats them in a rich glaze that shines like glass. The apricot yogurt accompaniment cuts the meaty intensity with its fruity sweetness and the pea salad brings acidity and crunch.

The Minx loves carrots for some reason, so she was insistent about having the smoked carrot agnolotti with morels, onions, and peas in a simple butter sauce as her entree. This dish of tender pasta filled with a cream-enriched puree of mesquite-smoked carrots may be the vegetarian entree on the menu, but we carnivores found it immensely satisfying. The combination of smoke and mushrooms made up for the absence of meat. More restaurants should offer such well-thought-out meatless options.

As a pasta person, I really wanted to order this too, but we had to try as many dishes as we could so....

My entree was the crispy black sea bass in a spicy boullabaisse with potatoes and confit tomatoes. Crusty bread with rouille is a traditional accompaniment to a fish stew like this, and the B & O doesn't skimp with their coating of the garlicky sauce. Be careful with this; the flavors of garlic and saffron are pretty intense and can linger in your mouth for some time, so if you don't want so much rouille, feel free to scrape it off. As for the bass, it was perfectly cooked with a lovely crisp skin and silky smooth flesh, and the broth was spicy but mellow.

As if that wasn't enough food, we sampled three desserts.

The B&O Oreos, chocolate cookies sandwiching creamy marshmallow filling, are served two to an order. That would be plenty, but it also comes with a large bar of peanut butter mousse encased in chocolate along with several dots of creme anglaise on the plate. It's almost like one dessert to eat there (the mousse) and one dessert to take home (the cookies).

If not a trend, elevated versions of humble s'mores have become a frequent feature on many dessert menus. This particular version takes the unique approach of sandwiching toasted marshmallow flavored ice cream in between house-made graham crackers. A pool of chocolate sauce and some actual toasted marshmallow completes the flavor profile. The ice cream is really subtle, and I recommend that you try a few bites without the cracker to notice its toasty flavors.

Possibly our favorite dessert of the evening was the buttermilk pie with blackberry jam ice cream. The sweet lemony pie has the consistency of thick custard, and the blackberries provided a tangy counterpoint. The ice cream is served on a bed of feuilletine bits, which keep it from sliding all over the plate and also add a crisp texture.

It's a special treat to go to the B&O Brasserie because, while the food has evolved over time, it's always inventive and offers new taste sensations. I think Chef Hines is on an especially smart track with this new menu, blending the familiar with the exotic and evoking taste memories while creating new ones at the same time.

B&O Brasserie
2 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland, 21201
443-692-6172

Posted on Minxeats.com.

The Food Market's Private Kitchen

The Food Market used to have a pretty sweet employee lounge in the basement of their Hampden location, complete with a couch and big screen TV, but when the demands of their catering business required a prep kitchen, the lounge was the logical place to use. Once transformed into a place to cook, this new kitchen was sometimes idle between catering gigs. Chef Chad Gauss decided to add some decorative elements to turn the utilitarian cooking space into something resembling a Hampden basement and opened it up to special group dinners known as the Private Kitchen.

Seating up to 12 people, the Private Kitchen can be reserved for special events such as business meetings or sports viewing parties. There are three options for your dining pleasure: a monthly five-course chef's dinner; a-la-carte, with selections from the regular menu; and a "slay the menu" option where the guests leave their dining experience to the chef's discretion. The Minx and I were invited, along with other members of the media, to experience the five course chef's dinner option.

Pretzels with beer sauce

We started off with some familiar Food Market snacks: soft pretzels with beer sauce, and fried pickles. Those pretzels provide all the flavor you would expect from a soft pretzel, but are lighter and more buttery tasting. They're so good, they don't even really need the beer cheese dip, but eat it anyway. And somehow that combination of juicy dill pickle and crispy fried batter works so well, especially when combined with bleu cheese and hot sauce, flavors reminiscent of buffalo wings.

Fried Pickles

The first official course of the evening was modestly called Chicken Broth. The broth was indeed a clean and intensely chickeny-tasting chicken stock with a faint whiff of truffle oil. The broth became soup when poured over a bowl of items including roasted, finely diced mirepoix, freshly made farfalle, both raw and fried prosciutto, and an asiago cream. The combination of flavors and textures are incredibly fun to play around with.

Chicken Broth

The next course featured a pear poached in red wine and stuffed with goat cheese. The red wine was enhanced with clove, shallot, thyme, and other elements to further flavor the pear, which sat atop a raspberry emulsion, arugula, and spiced pecans. Again, the balance of flavors and textures was spot on, with crisp and spicy pear and pecan, creamy goat cheese, and fruity emulsion.

Poached Pear Stuffed with Goat Cheese

The seafood course featured a thick chunk of seared wild rockfish decorated with lemony lump crab meat and micro greens. The skin of the fish was perfectly crisp and the two types of aquatic protein provided an interesting juxtaposition of flavors and textures.

Rockfish with Lump Crab Meat

Our entree was charred lamb with salt-roasted baby potatoes, porcini cream, horseradish mustard, and strips of shaved portobello mushroom. The mustard provided a burst of sinus-clearing heat, balancing the hearty cream and potatoes. The medium rare lamb was succulent and tender, and I was not ashamed to grab both chops by the bone to wrestle them for every morsel of meat.

Charred Lamb

Dessert was a deconstructed s'more. A house-made graham cracker was decorated with swirls of rich chocolate pot de creme (sans pot) and toasted marshmallow. A hickory foam served to recreate the illusion of a s'more cooked over a wood fire. It's advisable to not taste the hickory foam on its own as the flavor was a bit harsh, but taken with the rest of the elements, there is a vague smokiness that completes the effect of the campfire treat. The Minx and I are not fans of traditional s'mores, but when each element is made from scratch with this level of care, the effect is quite satisfying.

S'mores

Along with some incredible food, the cozy atmosphere of the basement kitchen and the ability to watch your meal being prepared in front of you creates an enjoyable dining experience. It's rare when you get to watch chefs of this caliber at work in such close quarters. The whole evening is a bit like having a terrific dinner party--if your host happens to be an award-winning chef.

You can have this same meal (or one like it) at the Food Market Private Kitchen on March 26th, 2016. Tickets are $80 per person, and will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis. For more details and to buy tickets, go to http://www.thefoodmarketbaltimore.com/ and click the "Private Kitchen" link at the top of the page, then scroll down.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

S'more or Less

I have a confession to make: I don't like s'mores. Go ahead, blink in disbelief. I can wait until you're done.

Have you recovered yet? Then I shall proceed.

When I was a kid, I loved eating toasted marshmallows. At least once a summer we'd pack the family into the car and make a trip to my uncle's house in Pasadena. Only a county away and probably an hour or so drive, it always felt like a real journey to me. In addition to the proximity to the dead-fish-and-broken-bottle-covered "beach," Uncle Charlie had something we didn't have - a grill. After the family feasted on burgers and hot dogs, he'd let the kids roast marshmallows over the dying coals.

It wasn't until years later when I realized I could toast a marshmallow just fine with a fork held over a gas burner on the kitchen stove.

But never did I contemplate putting the gooey, melty, caramelized-and-slightly-burnt wonder that is a toasted marshmallow on a dry, scratchy graham cracker with a piece of horrible Hershey's milk chocolate. Why would anyone do that?

I'd make a lousy Girl Scout.

I tried my first s'more when I was in my early 30s, when Mr Minx and I shared one at a friend's block party. It was one of those special moments of adulthood when I realized that I had not been missing anything.

Everyone else in the country seems to adore s'mores and s'more-flavored things. Restaurants even offer them - or a variation on the theme - as a dessert option (Vina Rosina and Jack's Bistro locally, to name two). I still don't get it. Marshmallows and graham crackers are perfectly fine by themselves. Hershey's chocolate, not so much. So I thought, what if I changed things up? Would better chocolate and different cookies make a difference?

Welcome to the Great S'more Experiment, in which the Minxes pair different cookies and different varieties of milk chocolate with regular old squishy grocery store marshmallows.

Test #1: Leibniz biscuits and Lindt milk chocolate with hazelnuts

While the Leibniz biscuits had a less-scratchy texture than graham crackers, they were still too dry. The Lindt chocolate, however, was a huge improvement over Hershey's. The experiment concluded with my eating the rest of the chocolate bar and calling it a night.

Test #2  Lorna Doones with Trader Joe's milk chocolate

I love Lorna Doones! Why don't I eat these more often? They're a pretty decent shortbread cookie, far better than the rancid-butter-smelling and much more-spendy Walker's brand. And they made a pretty decent s'more. And once again, the non-Hershey's chocolate proves to be better than the original. Yes, thank you, I'll have another. Or should that read, "I'll have s'more?"

Test #3  Trader Joe's Chewy Caramel Cashew cookies with TJ milk chocolate

The chewy texture of these cookies was just about perfect, however they had a few too many things going on and were perhaps too sweet. Still, better 'n grahams.

Test #4  Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate covered Butter Biscuits

No additional chocolate required here, just two marshmallows sandwiched between two cookies. Perfection. I'm starting to think that milk chocolate has been the wrong idea all along.

That was easily remedied by a trip to the store to buy more cookies and some dark chocolate!

Test #5  Lorna Doones with Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Lover's Chocolate Bar

Ok - this is more like it! The dark chocolate is definitely better than the milk. But it's still not perfect. Oh, and did I mention that I love Lorna Doones?

Test #6 Trader Joe's Belgian Butter Waffle Cookies and TJ's dark chocolate

The chocolate is right, but the cookie is too sweet. Of course this makes me want to experiment with real waffles....

Test #7 Archway Snickerdoodles and Trader Joe's 72% Dark Chocolate

While the cookies had a slightly artificial flavor on their own, teamed with chocolate and marshmallow they shone. The chewy texture was a plus, as was the hit of cinnamon. Guest taster Kate, who had never eaten a s'more of any type, gave it a big thumb's up.

Test #8 Trader Joe's Triple Peanut Cookies with TJ's 72% Dark Chocolate

Ok, so this was overkill. Still, better than the traditional by a mile.

After seven different combinations, we were getting a little sick of s'mores, so that's where we stopped. So what was learned through this experiment? That just about anything other than the original combination of graham crackers, third-rate chocolate, and marshmallow is pretty damn tasty. In all versions, there was some intense sweetness, so a little went a long way. And that marshmallow stickiness pops up in the oddest places, even when you're absolutely sure you licked it all off....

My favorite combo? #4. To my tastebuds, it had the proper ratio of chocolate to marshmallow to cookie, and good texture.

What's your favorite s'more, or have you never ventured away from the original?