A Quickie

Salem is great so far even though I've only eaten in the hotel (which is really lovely) and at the conference, The food hasn't been bad at all. I have, however, managed to fit in two glasses of this stuff & I highly recommend it if you can find it.


Sara gave me very strong recommendation for Blossoming Lotus. She swears I'll love it (even though it's vegetarian) and I trust her, so I'm going to try it. My conference ends with dinner tomorrow and I'm going to lie in the pool, haunt Powell's, and eat for five days so if you know of other must-eats in the Salem - Portland area, please let me know in the comments.

Catching Up

Another busy week with not so much time for cooking (or cleaning...). But today I made one of my favorite dishes, one that screams SUMMER: spicy roasted cherry tomatoes with marjoram.


This is adapted from an Epicurious recipe that calls for chicken breasts. I make it with chicken thighs but more often than not I'll just go with the tomatoes and garlic. Here's my version.

Spicy Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Marjoram

1 pint cherry (or grape) tomatoes
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp seasoned salt (I like the salle alla diavolo I got in CA last year)
1 tbsp fresh marjoram
4-5 garlic cloves

Preheat oven to 450. Mix all ingredients well, place in a shallow baking dish and roast for about 30 minutes or until tomatoes are blistering and splitting.

If I have hot pepper jelly I'll substitute that for the flakes. It's excellent warm or cold, add some feta and you have a great salad.

I used my Neuwave oven for these and they only took about 9 minutes to cook. The upside is that the kitchen stayed cool, the downside is the lack of crunchies that form on the bottom of the dish when it's roasted in the oven. That's a tradeoff I can handle in the summer.
...

While I was in Europe I missed my friend Tom's birthday slumber party so on Wednesday we went out for a belated celebration dinner at Cities Grille. This place has been open for quite a while and the food is consistently great.

We each had a salad to start and he went with the Chick-a-rizo: gulf shrimp sauteed with chicken breast, scallions, tomatoes, mushrooms and chorizon sausage in a white wine lemon herb sauce, served over cheesy tortalloni. Sorry the pic is a little fuzzy but it still looks delicious. Tom gave it a thumbs up. (He chose not to have the shrimp.)


I had my Cities Grille standard, the Blue Gouda. It's a beef tenderloin served on toasted cornbread and topped with a housemade bleu cheese, gouda cheese and sun dried tomato spread and comes with herb sautéed shrimp and mashed potatoes. The juice from the beef soaks into the cornbread and the cheese / tomato spread is spicy and sublime. I've always thought the shrimp were overkill on an already perfect dish but I'm not about to ask for them to be held!


Cities Grille
4511-C John Tyler Highway Williamsburg, VA 23185
757-564-3955

Kitchen progress update, weekend eating

Ok, my kitchen is not yet in tip top shape. Life, work, and - best of all - books got in the way this week. However, I'll have you know that I'm writing this post while taking a break from scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees. Honest to god. As the floor has only been Swiffered occasionally since I moved in over three years ago, this is a very gratifying exercise. So I'm giving myself a week extension (for good behavior) to finish this project.

Yesterday's trip to the farmer's market was a little disappointing. Some of the vendors I'd hoped to see weren't there so I didn't get any meat, but I did stock up on onions, eggplant, jalapenos, and cherry tomatoes. Add this to my realfoodwilliamsburg order and I have plenty of stuff for a week's worth of great fresh meals. Good thing I'm working at home tomorrow and can be cooking while editing essays, etc. I also got a couple of pots of herbs to start my balcony herb garden earnest. You can see them (and Samuel) here.

In the afternoon I met my friend Laurie for lunch at Emerald Thai, still my favorite Thai restaurant in Williamsburg (264 Mclaws Cir, Williamsburg, VA 23185,757-645-2511). Yes, we only have two and I do like Thaipot, but Emerald still holds the top spot. Laurie got some tofu dish that I refused to take a photo of (one of these days I'll conquer my very visceral dislike of that stuff) and I got a seafood soup I hadn't had before (forget the name, I'll look it up and post later). The broth was like that of Tom Yum but with more of a fish sauce tang. My bowl had scallop, shrimp, mussel, and squid, one large piece of each. It was delicious and I'd definitely get it again.


For the main I got the soft shell crab special with panang sauce. The first couple of bites were truly excellent, the crab was lightly battered and fried crisp and the panang flavors complimented it perfectly. After that, I must have been talking too much and the crab got a little soggy. Simple solution: eat first, talk later!


For breakfast this morning I ate the last of the peaches soaked in white wine that I made the other night, with some plain yogurt, sliced almonds, and a little demarara sugar sprinkled over. Although they weren't very pretty (thus no photo), they were delicious, and since peach season is just starting I'm looking forward to a lot more of these. The wine I used was the one I had open for sipping, a crisp and light Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Tenuta Mormorala.

Here is one of my very favorite summer indulgences: the cotton candy Blizzard from DQ.


This pic does not do justice to the creamy, crunchy, tooth-achingly sweet dessert. It's only available in the summer so a couple each year won't kill me, right? Right.

A little progress, a few crabs

This morning I ran a full dishwasher, hand washed a couple of large skillet-type items, and wiped down the stove. It made sense to move the water kettle next to the stove since there's a) room and b) a plug there that never gets used. Baby steps, but still it's nice to have a clean stovetop.


Here are some luscious soft shell crabs from the Farmer's Market. I soaked them in a mixture of milk and an egg for an hour, dredged them in flour, salt and pepper, and paprika, and fried them in butter / vegetable oil. A dollop of mayonnaise and a leaf of lettuce made the perfect sandwich.


In other food news, I had this very forgettable fish & chips meal at Spectators Sports Bar while watching the Euro 2008 final. The chips weren't bad but didn't raise the level of the fish which were just two obviously frozen planks plunked down on the plate. The breading was hard without being crunchy or crispy, if that makes sense, and there was no malt vinegar in evidence (though to be fair I didn't ask the rather nice and obviously very new waitress). The house-made potato chips were lackluster and needed a lot of salt. On the heels of the so-so buffalo wings from the semi-final on Wednesday (not the best in Williamsburg as the website proclaims), this does not bode well for future dining outings. I will have to give the place one more try for their burger but if that doesn't come up to the hype it's three strikes and they're out.

DC Food Trip, Finale

This lovely young woman is Stephanie. She is grinning at the camera not because she's getting ready to see Eddie Izzard but because she's poised over a tray of three gorgeous little dishes of crème brûlée. We're still at Belga Café, still full and happy from our meal and beer.

The brûlée on the right is either maple or molasses and it was delicious, the brown sugar was crackly perfectly on top and the creamy dense custard inside tasted like ginger snap cookie pudding. Thank god it was so good as it was the high point of the course. The one in the center was supposed to be vanilla cb with five peppers (?) and strawberry topping. The one to the left should have been pistachio cb with tapioca topping. Instead, the center was pistachio cb (clearly, as it was green) with strawberry topping and it was so-so. The strawberry topping was good but the pistachio was underwhelming. Plus, cb should be crackly on top or it's just custard.

The third dish contained what was to be the real problem of the night. As far as we could tell it was the vanilla with five peppers (never understood, never explained) with the misplaced tapioca topping (identified by the tapioca pearls). Steph, the cb afficianado, took one bite and the sides of her smile dropped. "Taste this." I did, and it was bad. Not as in "I don't like this," more like "this dessert is really old or has been left out of the fridge and has gone off." We both tried another small taste before suggesting to the waiter that something might be wrong. His response was "Oh, that one's my favorite. But lots of people don't like it." No "Let me take that back to the kitchen." No "customer is always right" attitude here! Maybe if we'd been obnoxious instead of excruciatingly polite he wouldn't have blown us off.

To further add insult to injury a manager came by and asked us how things were. We said the meal and beer were great but something wasn't right with this one cb. He also informed us that that was the least popular flavor and breezed off. Clearly our palates aren't sophisticated enough for Belga Café's rancid crème brûlée. Our powers of observation also don't allow us to remember which topping should be on which dessert. Hmm.

Love the mussels, love the beer, but the dessert experience left such a bad taste in my mouth it will be a while before I go back.

Lunch at Maurizio's

Yesterday the Office went out for a birthday lunch at Maurizio's Italian restaurant (264-E McLaws Circle, Williamsburg). I was not keen on this having had a less than stellar Sunday dinner there in the fall but other people were eager to try it, and I'm very glad they were! Lunch was a completely different animal and I'm ready to try dinner again.

First, a word on the garlic knots. These were disappointing to me. IMO, Doraldo's has the best garlic knots in town. They're smaller, more dense and chewy. On the plus side, the larger size and airiness of Maurizio's knots was helpful when it came time to soak up the sauce. The knots were the only part of lunch that wasn't really great.

*** They had sweet tea, always a plus! ***

I had the special, homemade sausage with onions and peppers over pasta, and it was fantastic. I chose bucatini and half wish I'd gone with the fettucini like my boss did, but there's always next time. Other folks at the table were gushing over the gnocchi which looked lovely in both cream and marinara sauce.

It was easy to tell that everything was made fresh on order. My pasta was perfectly cooked, and the homemade sausage was hearty and nicely spiced to match the red sauce. We had birthday cake waiting back at the office so didn't order dessert, so that and espresso are definitely on list for the next visit.

Brunch at 2nd Street

My friend Tom and I had brunch at 2nd Street an American bistro on Sunday. Neither of us had been there since their big renovation, and we were looking forward to it. I'm happy to say that 2nd Street an American bistro did not disappoint! Can you tell the an American bistro part of their name cracks me up a little?

On to business. Care to guess what this is?


Only if you said "Obviously, that's the smoked gouda mac & cheese, panko breaded and fried golden brown with a fire roasted pepper coulis" would you be right. Oh wait, "That's a little piece of heaven on your plate" would be correct, too. Now I'm not a mac & cheese snob, but I am a few light years from being able to appreciate the stuff in blue box (though god knows I've eaten my share). This was really wonderful. The ratio of crunch outside to creamy inside was perfect. Note that though it's in the starter section, it's plenty big enough for a meal for one.

Even though we were pretty full and cooing with mac & cheese-induced delight, we plunged gamely on to our main courses. Here is Tom's torso getting ready to enjoy his french toast, a "flaky croissant dunked in a Frangelica-infused batter and served with apple wood bacon." With a little cup of straw- and blueberries. You can see what's left of his mango mint drink that really had no mint to speak of in it. His verdict: the french toast was a winner.




I had the Southern Chesapeake Benedict. The crab meat and gouda grit cake were delicious and worked well together, but I wasn't a fan of the flattened herbed scrambled egg or the greasy chive hollandaise. My second bloody mary here was much better than the first. Draw your own conclusions about that.



We didn't have dessert and I hope we're better people for it because the cakes in the display case looked pretty good.

The spaciousness of the new look is great. The place used to feel really cramped but now there's actually room to move between tables, even after you've eaten a big plate of fried mac & cheese. The decor is typical for this kind of restaurant (i.e., boring). One tiny complaint: Sunday was a dreary day in the 'burg and the restaurant was pretty dark anyway, so we asked to be seated near the windows to get whatever light we could. The hostess told us that section was closed off then promptly seated the next three tables out there. Ah well, we didn't need light to see those fried mac & cheese logs! We'll be back.

Lazy Sunday

A horribly unoriginal title already. Apt, but unoriginal.

Today was not a sleep in til noon day, no sirree. I was up by 8:30 enjoying coffee with whole milk goodness. Stephanie Insley Hershinow, one of my favorite people in the whole world, and her husband David came over for brunch. We had talked about going to the Blue Talon for their excellent Sunday brunch, but decided that with the 45 degree weather and the sleet and all it would be too much of a hassle.

After some strong coffee and good conversation, I had a pancake disaster (Steph, I promise you pancakes to go with your lime curd next time) so switched to simple scrambled eggs and fried ham. In the process we discovered some additional moldy food in the refrigerator, so I guess it wasn't entirely a bad thing.

This is the rare case where the company is the important thing, anyway.

Just before Steph and David got here I threw a brisket in the oven. This gem of a recipe from the NYTimes gives the biggest bang for the smallest effort I know. I think it was originally called Friday Night Brisket, and it involves putting a brisket fat side up in a dutch oven-like pot (I use my beloved blue Staub Cocotte), dumping onion soup mix then bottled chili sauce on it, crushing a couple of garlic cloves and scattering them around, adding just enough water to almost cover the meat, and letting it sit at 350 for 4 1/2 hours. (I recommend doing this on a gray day when you're stuck inside, or when you're just doing some crap job around the house. Trust me, the smell of this brisket cooking will make everything better.)

At that point you take it out and let it cool - it's okay to refrigerate overnight, for instance - skim the fat, pull the meat apart a bit with a fork, add a bag of baby carrots, and pop it back in the over at 350 for another hour. That's it. Except for the part where you eat it and think you've died and gone to heaven.

Long-time reader, first-time poster

I love to eat. I love cooking just as much, but it's hard for me to be consistent about it. I'll cook up a storm for a couple of weeks, then months will go by when the corkscrew and the French press are the only kitchen implements in my apartment that get any use.

Yes, I realize there are hundreds if not thousands of food blogs out there - trust me, I read many of them and save the recipes religiously. So many of them are really good, and the authors seem to be having so much fun. "What a great group to join!" I've thought, always wistfully. Today I'm thinking "What a great way to help me with my little problem."

You see, today I woke up at 11:39 (it's Saturday, but still), fixed a lovely French press of First Colony coffee (2/3 Guatemalan Sunset and 1/3 Viennese with cinnamon) and realized there was no milk. Unfazed, I punched open a can of evaporated milk, but as I waited for my coffee to steep I started rooting around in my refrigerator for something to eat. What I found there was not pleasant.

First let me say that I've been working / traveling a lot for oh, the past four months or so. It's not an excuse, it's an explanation.

There were eggs that expired in October 2007. Ditto butter in October, November, and December 2007. Spinach and kale I got from the good folks at Real Food Williamsburg on March 18. Leftover roast beef that I cooked, oh, maybe a month ago, just sitting in a Le Creuset casserole. A nasty smell was coming from my freezer. Could that be the package of boudin that I brought back from New Orleans in 2002, the same one that "survived" the great Hurricane Isabel-related power outage of fall 2003 as well as a move across town? Or was it the six ziplock bags of chicken bones, vegetable scraps, and shrimp shells that I've been saving for stock?

I fled the apartment with a big bag of food gone bad and tossed it in the dumpster with a huge sigh of relief. The world was new again, birds were singing, buds were opening around me. I could start over. Anything was possible. So I went to Fresh Market for milk from Yoder Dairy. And the Wine Seller for a great Greek wine tasting, Amish butter, cheese, one of the Greek wines that tastes like a light port, and an Italian prosecco that Andy recommended (more on those in a later post). Note: the Wine Seller has tastings 4-7 every Friday and Saturday. And finally to Ukrops for everything else.

On the way back I stopped in at the Spitfire Rotisserie (4391 Ironbound Road, open 11-8 Mon - Sat). Even though it's only about a mile from where I live I hadn't heard of this place before getting an email from them last week. Since all I'd had for the day was the coffee with evaporated milk and a creme horn sample at Ukrops, it was time for a little something something to tide me over until I could do some cooking.

The Spitfire is a local establishment owned by Craig Reeves of The Catering Company and Steve Rose of Williamsburg Event Rentals. It's on the small side but there are still a couple of tables where you could sit down and have your meal. Chicken and ribs are displayed in a hot case, and a cold case holds a good selection of salads. Hot sides are kept behind the counter. To be honest, everything looked good but in the end I brought home a half rack of ribs, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread stuffing with gravy. (Note: I do know that this does not sound like a snack, but it really is if I'm only tasting and saving most of it for tomorrow.)

The ribs were meaty and perfectly toed the line between tender and chewy. The sauce was a bit on the sweet side for me, but I'd still recommend them. With just a bit of salt added the mac & cheese tasted almost as good as homemade, cheesy and toothsome. The stuffing was just how I like it: moist, mushy, and slightly herb-flavored with a bit of celery crunch. Others might find the gravy on the salty side, but I love salt so for me it was just right - not too chicken-y, if you know what I mean - and it paired perfectly with the stuffing. I really did have just a bit of each and am looking forward to making all of of tomorrow's meals from the leftovers. Oh wait, there's that brisket from Ukrops waiting to be braised ...

This blog may help me be better (as in more sensible) about cooking and eating. It may be a great way to praise or vent my spleen about local food establishments. It may be a great way to prove to myself (and others) that Williamsburg isn't such a terrible place for a foodie to live. Or it may not. But it's going to be fun.

The adventure begins.