Friday, December 06, 2019

Flashback Friday - Toss

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This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on December 7, 2011.

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For several weeks I kept my eye on a "coming soon" sign on the building at 5716 York Road, just north of the junction of York and Bellona, and right next door to the establishment bearing bold black on yellow signage emblazoned with, "Chicken, Steak, and Chocolate Cake." What was coming soon was Toss, the umpty-umpth pizza joint on the short stretch of road between Bellona and Belvedere. Unlike most of them, however, Toss offers "gourmet" pizzas, on your choice of regular, thin, or wheat crusts. Additionally, they offer sandwiches, salads, and chicken wings baked with olive oil and herbs.

The day after Thanksgiving, I wasn't ready to face turkey leftovers (still not) and it seemed like the perfect time to order a pizza. To be delivered, because Mr Minx was attempting to crank out the remainder of the 50,000 words required to win NaNoWriMo and didn't want to leave the house merely to refuel. We used Toss' nifty online ordering system to try the Pizza Prosciutto topped with caramelized onions, proscuitto, and mixed greens on a "regular" crust.

Toss is smart. Rather than pile the greens on the pizza and have them go soggy on the way to our house, they put a pile of mesclun in a separate container.

DIY pizza topped with greens
The crust was the perfect thickness for us, on the thin side, but not crackery. It had a generous amount of fresh mozzarella melted over sautéed onions and bits of proscuitto. I would have liked the onions to have been really caramelized to a nice dark brown, to add a bit of sweetness to the pie, but otherwise the pizza was pretty good. Definitely one of the better delivered pizzas in the area.

We like fries with our pizza, but Toss' menu indicates that "Mediterranean" fries are only included with any of fourteen sandwiches they have available. I decided that we needed to try the roasted eggplant sandwich with mozzarella, feta, roasted peppers, red onions, olives, and pesto - just to get the fries.

The fries were unevenly cut strips and blobs of potato, flavored with garlic and herbs and fried until crisp. Definitely something that should be offered separately. The sandwich was just short of outstanding. Its roll (probably made from the same dough as the pizza) was lightly crisp on the outside, fluffy inside, and still warm. The filling tasted mostly of pungent kalamata olives and could have used more pesto, but otherwise was a nice melange of soft, melty, and salty bits. Mr Minx, who is not a fan of eggplant at all, happily scarfed up an entire half.

So...so far so good. We enjoyed both the pizza and sandwich and look forward to an occasion to order from Toss again. I'm thinking wings, a meatball sandwich, and a mushroom pizza are in our near future.

Toss
5716 York Road
Baltimore, MD 21212
(410) 433-8677
http://tossthepizza.com

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Friday, November 29, 2019

Flashback Friday - Pumpkin Butter

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This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on November 8, 2011.

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The other day, I had a dream about making pumpkin butter.

In the dream, I stood in front of my stove, stirring a pot filled with pumpkin purée, brown sugar, and spices. As the mixture bubbled, it perfumed the air with the delicious scent of Fall. And Thanksgiving.

When I awoke, craving pumpkin butter, I knew I had to make the dream come true. (Considering how hard that is to do with most dreams, I couldn't let this opportunity pass!)

I dumped a can of pumpkin into a saucepan, added some brown sugar and spices, and hoped for the best. Both in my dream and in real life, it was a simple and relatively quick process. Not to mention inexpensive. For a couple of bucks ($1.50 for a can of pumpkin, a few cents more for the bits of sugar and spice I already had on hand), I had a heaping pint of deliciousness that would probably cost between $5 - $8, had I bought the product ready-made at the store.

Pumpkin Butter

1 15oz can pumpkin puree
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then turn heat down to lowest setting. Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour into a pint jar. Unless you want to go to the trouble of sterilizing/canning, do not store pumpkin butter unrefrigerated. Eat within two weeks.

Makes about a pint.

Note: if you want to make your own pumpkin purée with a fresh pumpkin, I won't stop you.

Spread thickly on your favorite bread, or eat straight from the jar with a spoon.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Friday, November 22, 2019

Flashback Friday - Pot Roast

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This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on November 2, 2011.

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My mom made the best pot roast. She used the simple recipe from her battered 1953-edition of the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook: coat a chuck roast with flour, brown in drippings made from its own rendered fat, add potatoes, carrots, onion, and celery, either water or stock, and simmer for 2.5 hours until done, after which time the gravy can be thickened or not. The end. The recipe is literally a single paragraph in the "meat" section.

I loved it so much, I requested it for dinner several times a month. And I loved it so much, I'd never attempted to cook it myself, knowing that I'd never achieve that degree of tenderness or the rich flavor of the gravy (which I'm pretty sure was enriched with a package of McCormick's Brown Gravy). Recently, however, I thought I'd give it a go. The BH&G recipe is deceptively simple and it would be so disappointing if it didn't turn out like Mom's. Instead, I decided to adapt a recipe of Ina Garten's. Because how can one go wrong with a recipe from the Barefoot Contessa?

The result was...meh. I'm going to blame the meat.

Fat-obsessed dieters have created a world of unfortunately lean meats. The chuck roast I picked up at Wegman's had been ferociously trimmed; had I wanted to use the BH&G recipe, it would have been impossible to sear it in its own fat, since there was none. And because of this leanness, the meat lacked the unctuous tenderness of Mom's pot roast. Then there's the wine issue. After several attempts at braising meats in wine, I've decided that I don't like the resulting flavor. Nor the pinkish grey color. The sauce that resulted from the braise was a dark puce, and I wished I had a bottle of my mother's magic ingredient, Kitchen Bouquet, in order to make it darker and richer-looking.

The whole experience left me wanting. Next time, I will endeavor to find the fattiest chuck roast possible, skip the wine, and...pick up a packet of McCormick Brown Gravy.

Pot Roast with Root Vegetables (adapted from Ina Garten)

1 (4 to 5-pound) chuck roast
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
flour
olive oil
1 cup baby carrots
2 onions, quartered
2 parsnips, peeled and cut into 2" chunks
2 cups celery root, cut into 2" chunks
1 lb baby potatoes
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 each sprig fresh rosemary and thyme
1 bay leaf
2 cups red wine
1 cup chicken or beef stock

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Pat beef dry with a paper towel. Season it liberally with salt and pepper and then dredge the roast in flour. In a large Dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons of oil over medium heat. Sear the roast, turning every 4 or 5 minutes, until it is nicely browned on all sides. Remove meat to a plate.

Add another 2 tablespoons of oil to the pot. Add the vegetables and garlic and cook for about fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally. Deglaze the pan with the wine. Bring to a boil and add the chicken stock, herbs, and bay leaves. Place roast back into the pot and return to the boil. Cover pot and place in the oven, cooking for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, until meat is fork tender. Check periodically and add more stock if it seems to be evaporating.

Remove roast to a cutting board. Place pot on top of the stove and turn the heat to medium. Skim fat from sauce. Make a beurre manié by stirring together 2 tablespoons of flour and 1 tablespoon of butter. Stir it bit by bit into the sauce until thickened to your liking. Taste for seasoning and add additional salt and pepper, if needed.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Friday, November 15, 2019

Flashback Friday - Apple Crisp

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This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on November 16, 2011.

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It's Fall, and Fall means apples, apple pie, apple butter, apple cider, and especially apple crisp. There's almost nothing more comforting to me than a big bowl of hot apple crisp topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or maybe a drizzle of cream.

Just typing that sentence makes me want some right now.

I tried Top Cheftestant Robin Leventhal's Quickfire-winning apple crisp recipe a couple years back. It was good, but it had too many extraneous flavors. I prefer apples+cinnamon+maybe walnuts. My mom made a great version, very plain, but I have no idea where she got the recipe. Her beloved Better Homes & Gardens book only has apple brown betty, which just isn't the same. So I poked around teh innernets and found a simple recipe from Betty Crocker.

It was good, but not perfect. I used half Granny Smith and half Fuji apples, which at the end of the recommended 30-minute cook time were still somewhat crunchy. We ate it anyway. It was much better a couple of days later, when I popped the casserole back into the oven for a while. The apples grew more tender and the crumble got crustier, but there was this third somewhat gooey texture from where the topping got saturated by the apple liquid. I think it was my favorite part.

If you want that version, follow the recipe below. Either eat part of it or just stir it up a bit so some of the crisp topping can get soggy. Cover with aluminum foil and refrigerate. The next day, put it into a 350F oven for 15 minutes, then remove the foil and cook for an additional 15 minutes. (Yes, an additional 30 minutes seems like a long time, but remember it's now cold from the fridge.) Enjoy with ice cream, whipped cream, or a drizzle of heavy cream or half-and-half.

Betty Crocker's Apple Crisp

4 cups of sliced apples (Granny Smith and Fuji, or Golden Delicious)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats
1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Cream or Ice cream, if desired

Heat oven to 375ºF. Grease bottom and sides of 8-inch square pan with shortening.

Spread apples in pan. In medium bowl, stir remaining ingredients except cream until well mixed; sprinkle over apples.

Bake about 30 minutes or until topping is golden brown and apples are tender when pierced with a fork. Serve warm with cream.


Posted by theminx on Minxeats.com.

* 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.

Friday, November 08, 2019

Flashback Friday - Cooking with Il Douche

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This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on November 28, 2011.

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While I love to pick on chef Rocco DiSpirito, he probably doesn't deserve the beating I give him as much as does another chef, Scott Conant. (Rumor has it that DiSpirito is actually a very nice guy.) Conant first popped up on my radar when he appeared as a guest judge on Season 5 of Top Chef. He didn't have to open his mouth for me to slap the "smarmy" tag on him; one look at the carefully-groomed stubble was quite enough. Top Cheftestant Fabio Viviani wasn't all that impressed with him, either. (Check out the last part of our interview with Fabio.)

A blogger that I follow posted on Facebook and Twitter not long ago that she was thisclose to Conant. I told her that I think he's a douche. Conant himself responded on Twitter that she should "tell her friend I'm not a douche."

After poking around his account for a few minutes, I noticed that he seems to enjoy re-Tweeting comments that disparage him. Maybe he gets off on it. 

He deleted his "tell your friend I'm not a douche" comment before I thought to screen-cap it. Guess he can't deny the truth.

Since this is a food blog, I figured I should try one of his recipes before I trash talk him. Because I've read raves about his simple spaghetti with tomato and basil sauce, that seemed to be the dish to try. Mr Minx and I whipped it up one recent evening.

Eh. It's fine. The sauce was so unctuous from the copious amounts of oil, butter, and starchy pasta water, the tomato provided merely an acidic accent that could also be achieved with a more reasonably-priced squeeze of lemon or dash of zest.

It's almost criminal that this dish is listed on the Scarpetta menu at $24. Wait...what am I saying, "almost?" Definitely criminal.

Personally, I think it would be tastier with more cheese, some shellfish, and chopped red onion.

Scott Conant's Spaghetti with Tomato-and-Basil Sauce

1⁄2 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
30 fresh plum tomatoes, peeled and seeded
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
11⁄2 pounds dried spaghetti
1 tablespoon butter
8 basil leaves, cut into a fine chiffonade
1⁄4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Add the olive oil to a pan and heat until it begins to smoke lightly. Add the tomatoes, salt, pepper, and red-pepper flakes, but take into consideration that the sauce will reduce and the salt will become concentrated. Crush the tomatoes with a potato masher to release all their liquid. Cook for 25 minutes over medium to medium-high heat, until the tomatoes form a semi-chunky sauce.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add the spaghetti. When it is three-quarters cooked, drain the pasta and reserve the water. Add the spaghetti to the sauce and cook over medium-high heat until all the liquid is absorbed and the pasta is al dente, stirring occasionally. If the sauce becomes too thick, add a little of the pasta water to thin out the sauce. Remove from the heat, and, just before serving, add the butter, basil, and cheese, mixing thoroughly until the pasta is an orange hue. Season to taste with salt.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Friday, October 18, 2019

Flashback Friday - Tequila Mockingbird

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This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on October 26, 2011.

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Ocean City, Maryland, is hardly a foodie destination, and we're ok with that. Most trips, we end up eating pretty decent pizza at Lombardi's, tender ribs from J.R.'s, and terrific sushi at Yokozuna. If we're there more than three nights, another restaurant has to enter the rotation, and occasionally it's Tequila Mockingbird. Every time we go there, I think it's a terrific idea, and every time we leave I think, "why did I eat that?"

Not that the food is bad. It's not bad. It's just...bland. But that doesn't seem to keep anyone away. Seems like every time we've eaten there, there's been a small hoard of people at the front of the restaurant, waiting for a table. I don't really get it.

Ok, maybe I get going there for a margarita and some chips and salsa, which always seem freshly made. The chips were warm and un-greasy, and completely unsalted on our most recent visit. (That's fine - I prefer my tortilla chips unsalted.) The salsa also seemed underseasoned, but otherwise had the standard mix of tomatoes, onions, and cilantro.

After perusing the pun-heavy menu, which is divided into sections like "Chimi Chimi Bang Bang," "Gone with the Taco," and "Love American Style," you know, the usual suspects (see what I did there?), I ordered the "Tijuana Triple," a typical Tex-Mex platter of excess including a mini shrimp quesadilla, a chicken hard taco, and a cheese enchilada, plus arroz verde and refried beans. Pretty standard fare that can be made at home quite easily, with or without the help of Old El Paso. How could it go wrong? Well, not wrong, per se. Just horribly...uninteresting. The chunks of chicken breast in the taco were not only boneless and skinless but also completely devoid of seasoning and flavor. They were also slightly tough, but that was expected. Topping the meat were some unseasoned bits of tomato and onion and shredded lettuce. More of this bland vegetation topped the cheese enchilada, which was orange goo wrapped in a corn tortilla. The enchilada sauce had slopped off to the side and was killing the crispness of the quesadilla, which was filled with - you guessed it - more of the tomato/onion blandness. The small shrimps hiding in the cheese were pretty tasty though, adding a modicum of flavor to an otherwise snooze-worthy plate that also included underseasoned arroz verde and gummy refried beans.

After eating as much as I could stomach, I went back to the chips and salsa. After the blandness of my dinner, I could detect that the salsa *did* have seasoning - maybe a bit of vinegar. Perhaps even salt.

Mr Minx fared much better. He wisely ordered beef as the filling for his chimichanga, and found it to be nicely seasoned with a bit of cumin and other spices. It was actually flavorful. Unfortunately, it came with the same boring beans and rice, and more completely unnecessary tomato/onion/shredded iceberg.

My camera phone sadly doesn't have a flash. My dish came out blurry,
but that's fine - it looked like a mess anyway.
We washed down our food with glasses of sangria, which tasted heavily of cinnamon. It reminded me of the Korean persimmon- and cinnamon-flavored dessert beverage, sujung gwa. I probably should have ordered a margarita.

So...it was edible. Everything seemed fresh, and it was fine for folks who don't like spicy or flavorful food, I suppose. Really quite a let-down after eating some really good Mexican chow at Miguel's recently. I did notice that we were possibly the youngest customers in the dining room, and that might have been the reason for the "taco night at the nursing home" quality of the meal. But then the place has a captive audience, as do the rest of OC's restaurants that don't seem to try very hard.

Sadly, eating at Tequila Mockingbird gave me this thought: Ocean City could use a Chili's.

Tequila Mockingbird
12919 Coastal Hwy
Ocean City, MD 21842
www.octequila.com
(410) 250-4424

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Monday, October 14, 2019

Red Pepper Sichuan Bistro

I have long lamented that there aren't any really good Chinese restaurants in northern Baltimore County. There are plenty of smaller American-style Chinese carry-outs, and Szechuan House, which has always been hit or miss. (They deliver, however, so that is definitely in their favor.) When I read in Kit Pollard's Hot Plate column for Baltimore Fishbowl that a new Sichuan restaurant opened on Allegany Avenue, we visited post haste, hoping for the best.

Red Pepper Sichuan Bistro is a rather expansive restaurant with a soothing decor and not particularly comfortable, unpadded, Chinese-style wooden chairs. The kitchen is also large and visible through a plate glass window at the back of the restaurant. Continuing the size theme is the menu, a glossy tome featuring not only lists of available dishes, but also helpful photographs of nearly all of them. Another theme of Red Pepper is spicy, which of course one would expect to find in a restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Sichuan province. My kinda food.

I'm always attracted to spicy wontons, so we had to order the Sichuan spicy wontons in red oil. I'm forever chasing the flavor of a similar dish I had years ago in a restaurant in Randallstown called Szechuan Best. There, the red oil was as aromatic as it was spicy. Red Pepper's rendition is very good, with nicely tender pork-filled wontons, but the sauce didn't have the kick that I was looking for. Still, it was pretty tasty and I'll order it again.

One of our two favorite Chinese restaurants is Grace Garden in Odenton, and one dish we always order there is the Sichuan pork belly, a dish of thinly sliced pork belly stir fried with chiles and leeks. We thought the Fried Salty and Dried Pork with Scallion at Red Pepper would be similar. It was, and it wasn't. When tasting the dish in the restaurant, I did notice that the pork was indeed salty, but it wasn't until I ate the leftovers at home three days later that I noticed the pork had also been smoked. Saltiness aside, the dish was quite nice, and as it was not spicy, somewhat of an antidote to the following dish.

We used to get a dish called "beef on toothpicks" at our other favorite Chinese restaurant, Hunan Taste (which appears to have closed permanently). Literally fried slivers of beef impaled on toothpicks, the meat was flavored with cumin and chiles. Red Pepper offers both beef and lamb with cumin. The dishes seemed similar enough despite the lack of pointed wooden implements, so we tried the latter. Baby, it was hot, but also redolent of the promised cumin. I can dig the heat of dried red chiles, which to me doesn't last as long on the palate as that of fresh green chiles, and is much easier for me to tolerate. However, Mr Minx found it a bit incendiary.

Another way to beat the heat of the lamb dish was to take bites of Shrimp with Rice Crusts. The menu describes the dish thusly: "When rice crust is combined with beef or pork, it tastes spicy. With shrimp or fish filet, amazingly, it changes to sweet and sour." The rice crusts - squares of crisply fried rice - are presented on their own in a large bowl, with the topping poured over at tableside.  Rather than some mysterious alchemical transformation, the shrimp and fish versions are simply presented in a somewhat brothy, lightly sweet and tangy sauce that is absolutely nothing like the ketchup-and-pineapple juice sweet-and-sour that Americans are used to (thank god). I imagine that the beef and pork versions have a spicy sauce, which we will have to try at another time.

The shrimp were plump and sweet, and there were a nice amount of vegetables. The rice crusts themselves have a nice roasty flavor, and I'd love to nibble them on their own. I am torn about their texture once deluged with sauce.

Finally, we tried the Stir-fry Green Beans, which I loved. The beans were still a little crisp, garlicky, and salty. Mr Minx likes them a little softer, and preferred the reheated beans a few days later. Still, a very good rendition of a favorite dish.

After this first visit to Red Pepper, we determined that we need to go back again, and often. The food was very good. Amazingly good for Towson. And while it might not be at the top of the heap for us just yet, we will put Red Pepper into our regular dining rotation and hope to taste most of the menu (might skip fish maw though) in the not too distant future.

Red Pepper Sichuan Bistro
11 Allegheny Avenue
Towson, MD 21204
http://www.redpeppermd.com

* 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.

Monday, October 07, 2019

Samos

How is it that I've lived in Baltimore for [many many] years and never went to Samos? We don't get to Greektown very often, and the last few times it was to dine at Ikaros. Ikaros is good, but we discovered that it is not Samos.

We wanted to eat everything, so we did. There were three of us, but we ordered enough food for 5 or 6. First was the trio of dips; from the five options, we chose the taramasalata, or fish roe dip, tzatziki, and olive tapenade. They came with a smattering of crudites and a pile of addictive toasted pita triangles. Oh, the pita. I could have just eaten that and been happy.

But we also ordered the grilled octopus, which came with a sprightly salad of tomatoes, red onion, green olives, and the evil chickpea (which were easy enough for me to pick out). And more pita. The char flavor on the cephalopod was quite excellent.

We also had the spinach pie, which was nicely flaky but not as thick with spinach and feta as some other places. It was good though.

We also tried some souvlaki. My brother debated with the waitress between the pork souvlaki served sandwich-style or merely skewered. I convinced him that we had enough pita on the table. Still, when I ordered one pork skewer and one of shrimp, our waitress assumed the pork should be the pita-wrapped version. It was actually a very tasty sandwich (is it a sandwich, technically?) The four shrimp at $7.75 seemed a bit skimpy, but they were excellent. And came with pita.

We also had the lamb chops, which seemed pricey at three for $25, but they were so juicy and delicious, I can deal with the cost. Plus they came with a small Greek salad, a pile of potatoes and veg, and of course, more pita.

I couldn't resist the Greek green beans, which were so so good.

Oink! We finished most of the food, apart from some of the veg and a pile of pita triangles, and we ordered dessert, too. I was in the mood for galaktoboureko, a custard-filled filo concoction topped with cinnamon and honey. My brother ordered the same.

Mr Minx got the baklava. Both desserts were served warm in large, shareable portions, each a steal at only $4. Delicious. But probably too much food for me. Or any normal mortal.

I ate too much, but everything I ate made me happy. And isn't that the most important part of a meal?

Samos is cash-only, BYOB, so be forewarned. There is an ATM on premises though. Also, they don't take reservations, so if you like to eat at peak dinnertime, be prepared to wait. We old folks arrived at 5pm and had no problem getting a table. However, we also had to contend with multiple families with very small children, who, though well-behaved, were also very vocal. Good thing they were cute.

Samos
600 Oldham St
Baltimore, MD 21224
http://samosrestaurant.com

* 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.

Friday, October 04, 2019

Flashback Friday - Woodberry Kitchen

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This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on October 17, 2011.

This was a fun post to write, even if the meal wasn't very much fun.
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Like Cindy Wolf's Charleston, Spike Gjerde's Woodberry Kitchen is touted by both local food press and foodies alike. When I read such effusive praise, I'm always very skeptical, especially since we weren't at all impressed by the one visit we paid to Charleston. We had managed to avoid dining at Woodberry Kitchen for almost four years, but thought maybe it was high time to give in to the hype.

One of the main reasons we've never eaten at Woodberry Kitchen is that every time we check the online menu, we're not tempted by any of the offerings. They all sound so boring and plain and homey. If we want chicken and dumplings or a pork chop, we're perfectly capable of doing that in our own kitchen. And if we do go out and pay $28 for chicken and biscuits, well, the thing better be singing and dancing, I don't care how local/sustainable/free range/spoon fed it is. As it happened, Mr Minx and I were looking for a place in which to celebrate our 11th anniversary. A glance at Woodberry Kitchen's online menu revealed some items we might actually be into trying, so I made a reservation. Unfortunately, by the time October 7th rolled around, the menu was once more full of ho-hum selections. We went anyway.

The restaurant itself is set in one of the many old mill buildings that line the Jones Falls in the Hampden area of Baltimore City. With exposed brick, wooden tables, and plaid-clad servers, the place tries hard to evoke a feeling of modern rusticity. Kind of like the joints run by the bearded, pickle-making hipsters in Brooklyn who have already become a modern stereotype mocked by food critics. There's nothing else quite like Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore, though, so we've fallen for the image.

Not us, however.

If there's a bad table to be had in a restaurant, it's almost guaranteed that Mr Minx and I will get it. Maybe our preference to dine early gets us labeled as middle-aged or elderly rubes who won't appreciate the place and don't deserve a quieter or less-trafficked table. At Woodberry Kitchen, we clearly got the worst table in the house - a tiny one on the second floor, next to the service counter, where we were treated to the sight of servers slicing bread and packing up leftovers for two-and-one-half hours. Over my right shoulder, I could see particulate matter in the air coming from the fryers and the wood oven beneath us, and I knew that when we left the restaurant we'd be reeking of food odors. Immediately to our right, in our peripheral vision, was a line of round paper lantern-style light fixtures suspended from the ceiling. As the evening grew darker, these lights grew to have the effect of a bare lightbulb suspended from a basement ceiling. And strangely, as it got darker outside, the lights dimmed more and more until eventually we were sitting in the shadows.

It took us a while to decide what to eat. Between the stink of the fryers and the din of the music, I was irritated. Eventually, though, we were able to select a few items that seemed interesting. Because we expected small portions, we ordered both a flatbread and the "butcher's board" for starters, along with an order of wood-roasted okra.

The okra came out first. It was not a dish to convert okra-haters, those pussies who whine about the vegetable's delightfully mucilaginous texture. To me, it's more creamy than slimy, and what's more, okra tastes wonderful. WK's okra was still crisp and crunchy, with flavorful spots of char here and there, and made a good start to our meal.

Wood-roasted Richfield heirloom okra, pickled fish peppers
Soon afterward, we received the "foraged" mushroom flatbread. I don't know if the foraging was done in the wild or at the farmer's market, but the pizza-like creation was sublime. The crust was perfect - thin and chewy, the mushrooms nice and roasty, and the cabbage surprising. Forget Woodberry Kitchen - Spike Gjerde needs to open a pizza parlor. Looking down onto all of the many flatbreads arrayed on tables below our perch is all the evidence I need to declare Spike's Pizza a rousing success. (One party of six monopolized a table for about as long as we did. They ordered one dish of popcorn, some cheese and crackers, and five out of six "entrees" were $15 flatbreads. I think our dinner for two cost more than theirs.)

 Foraged mushrooms, savoy cabbage, onion, goat's cheese
With the flatbread came the WK Butcher's Board, a long plank topped with an arrangement of cured meat products. While a nice presentation, the board was longer than the table was wide, so part of it hung out over the edge of the table. The portion was generous, probably better for a party of four to share than a party of two. All of the meats were quite tasty, and I especially enjoyed the head cheese and the air-dried beef, which had a flavor reminiscent of pepperoni. The house-made pretzel sticks and pickles were also quite good.

 WK Butcher's Board - cured pork neck, black ham, pork belly, air-dried beef,
pretzels, head cheese, apricot jam, pickles, brown mustard, and assorted crackery things
Considering that the flatbread and Butcher's Board were so large, I'm rather surprised that our server didn't say anything when we also ordered entrées. Considering how long it took for our entrées to arrive, we probably could have cancelled the order. (Guess they had to kill the cow.)

I ate less than half of my Kitchen Burger and about three of the fries because I wanted to save room for dessert. The burger was fine, I suppose. Cooked perfectly to medium, the meat was juicy, but like most beef these days, it didn't taste particularly beefy. I loved the squishy sesame seed-topped bun though, which was toasted and buttered. The fries were also very good - crisp outside and soft within, like fries should be.

Kitchen Burger - house-ground chuck, lettuce, onion & pickles, fries/ raw cheddar
Mr Minx ordered steak because he was hungry and was surprised at both the generous amount of vegetables and the small amount of steak on the plate. The steak was tender, with a nicely seasoned crust, but the aggressively spicy padron pepper sauce underneath everything killed the flavor of the meat, which didn't have much of the expected "nutty" or "buttery" qualities customary to dry-aged beef.

 Liberty Delight dry-aged tavern steak - fried potatoes, green beans, tomato, padron pepper sauce
We also shared a side dish of underseasoned, slightly sandy, chard.

For dessert, Mr Minx went for the C.M.P., an item touted as the "best thing he ever ate," by Charm City Cakes' Duff Goldman. The bruléed marshmallow sauce on the top was a nice touch, but it made me fear for my dental work. The hubby, on the other hand, loved it.

C.M.P.  - malt ice cream, chocolate sauce, marshmallow fluff, wet peanuts
I had a sundae as well, the "Big Whoop," consisting of pumpkin ice cream layered with a pumpkin whoopie pie, candied pecans, and bourbon caramel. I expect whoopie pies to be soft, but this one had a bit of a crunchy crust. Crunchier still were the candied pecans, both of which lent nice contrast to the melty ice cream. I loved it. (No picture, because by the time dessert arrived, it was so dark on the 2nd floor, the only parts of the sundae visible in the photos I took were the bright blobs of ice cream.)

So while the faux-rustic surroundings, poor lighting, and incredible din were less-than-pleasing to us, I have to admit that the food was pretty darn good. Hype-worthy? Maybe not. But Woodberry Kitchen is certainly busy enough not to need my opinion one way or the other to be successful. Just ask Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff, who scored a much better table than we did.

Woodberry Kitchen
2010 Clipper Park Rd
Baltimore, MD 21211
www.woodberrykitchen.com
(410) 464-8000

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Monday, September 30, 2019

Don Angie, New York

When I go to New York, I try to get together with my busy friend Daisy for at least one  meal, maybe two. Our most recent visit coincided with the first day of school, but she made time for us at the end of a crazy day of classes. We had chosen Don Angie, a modern Italian restaurant in the West Village for our late evening repast.

It was a great choice.

We started off with a selection of cocktails, Mr Minx with the Scotch and Amaretto concoction called Uncle Jimmy and me with the Pignoli Colada. I can't remember what Daisy got and I'm too lazy to ask her. In any case, I felt they were all ok. A bit heavy on the ice, which made them seem watered down.

The food was much better.

This is the bbq calamari with pepperoni fried rice and herbed labne. I proclaim that all fried rice should have pepperoni in it. And chunks of tender squid. Fab.

My favorite app was the tonatto vitello. I've always been curious to try the traditional version of veal with a tuna sauce, but it can't possibly hold a candle to Don Angie's crudo version. A membrane-thin blanket of tuna carpaccio covered a lightly spicy veal tartare with crunchy bits of celery and something that I think could have been bread crumbs? In any case, it was fan-fucking-tastic. A must-try. We also had the cheese-tastic stuffed garlic flatbread, which can be seen lurking in the background.

Each of us ordered pasta. TBH, Mr Minx and I had eaten a lot already that day and weren't super hungry, but we didn't have any problem scarfing up our meals. He had the gorgeous caramelle (a stuffed pasta shaped like a cellophane-wrapped candy) with buffalo milk ricotta, served in a brothy sauce with cubes of pickled cantaloupe. It was a smaller serving, but just right for him (for once!)

I had the smoked paprika and tomato-flavored sopressini (vaguely shaped like fortune cookies) with smoked mussels in a sauce made with Peroni beer, topped with cilantro bread crumbs and lime butter. Daisy had the garganelli giganti with a broken meatball ragu, guanciale, and pecorino. Her dish was delish, but mine was indescribably good. The pasta was silky, the mussels (not actually smoked, just heated in a smoked paprika oil) were tender, and the lime and cilantro brought everything together. If the recipe wasn't so complicated, I'd try to make it at home myself.

We skipped dessert because we were so full, but happily so. Don Angie is going into my NY dining rotation for sure.

Don Angie
103 Greenwich Ave
New York, NY 10014
http://donangie.com

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Friday, September 27, 2019

Flashback Friday - Fumetto #17 - Sugar Ho

flashback friday graphic
This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on October 4, 2011.

I don't know why my fumetti weren't more popular. I thought they were funny, if a little tiny.

I bet Duff would think it was...AWESOME!

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Posted on Minxeats.com.