Eating My Way Through Boston - Vacation 2013

Two weeks ago my mom and I took our much-anticipated mini-vacation to Boston to visit my sister. I couldn’t believe that it was my first visit in three years, especially when it was so easy to pick up right where I left off. Though I had only been there for a handful of short stays before, the streets somehow seemed so familiar. Perhaps that’s what so magical about the city; it’s small and cozy enough to return to with a sense of acquaintance but big enough that there’s always something new to discover. And this past trip was certainly a brand new adventure filled with lots of excellent food, beautiful sights, and maybe a little to much sunshine along the way.

The first day there, my mom and I spent the afternoon meandering around the city, window shopping on Newbury Street and strolling though the park. We also stopped at the Copley Square Farmers Market, admiring the bounty of fruits and vegetables amongst stacks of beautiful artisanal bread and seas of mini sunflower bouquets. We then met up with my sister in Cambridge for what ended up being an incredibly memorable and unique meal at

OleanaRestaurant

. I’ve actually been on a bit of an Eastern Mediterranean food kick for a while so this definitely fed that frenzy. Their menu is mostly based on small plates and sharing so we settled with three mezes, two main courses, and two desserts to split between the three of us. 

We started with drinks. I got a cocktail that they called the Paopao. It was described as “sweet, tart, and bubbly” on the menu. I’m still actually not sure what it was but it tasted like strawberry lemonade mixed with champagne, which is definitely a good thing. We had a big basket of bread too (baguette, these sweet sesame breadsticks, and another sweet, dense brown bread) with the a fruity and complex olive oil.

Our first meze was spinach falafel with beet tzatziki, tahini, and a thin bread wrapping. The falafel was done perfectly; it was crispy on the outside and warm and tender on the inside. 

Next was the Sfela Cheese Saganaki (i.e. a baked gratin of briny, salty, cheese) with sesame, tomato, fig, and ouzo. Definitely the most unique but a unanimously decided favorite. 

The third meze were bread and cheese dumplings with nigella seeds and a tomato saffron soup. The dumplings were tender and the soup was perfect for dipping our last pieces of bread into. 

The main courses were amazing as well. My favorite dish of the night was the incredibly moist and crispy flattened lemon chicken, coated with za’atar and served over a pancake (which reminded me of a thicker filo) filled with a Turkish cheese filling. 

The other main was a wild salmon filet with squash, tomato, challah bread and a poached egg. 

Since we were also simultaneous celebrating my mom’s and my birthday, the two of us picked which dessert we wanted most. My mom chose an elaborate assembly of chocolate flavored components with hazelnuts and fig leaf ice cream. I went for the baked Alaska, a coconut macaroon topped with coconut ice cream, coated in meringue, which was then torched and drizzled with passion fruit caramel sauce. I ate almost the whole thing on my own. No regrets.

Despite our slightly lingering feeling of fullness the next morning, we still managed to start the day out with a great deal of food. It was vacation after all. My mom, my sister, her boyfriend and I were headed to Chatham, Cape Cod for a day at the beach and we needed provisions. We picked up breakfast and lunch at Boston’s famous Flour Bakery, owned by Joanne Chang. Based upon my very successful results with the Flour Bakery Cookbook, I was expecting a lot from the bakery and it certainly lived up to those. Breakfast was a Craquelin, brioche baked with candied orange peel and topped with caramelized almond slices. We also got sandwiches for lunch later. I got the lamb sandwich with tomato chutney, goat cheese, and arugula on sourdough – amazing – and we picked up some chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Let me just say, the search for the best chocolate chip cookie is officially over. You can find them at Flour. 

The beach was absolutely wonderful and after about 6 hours of seaside time (which was enough to produce one of my worst sunburns to date), we somehow were ready for dinner. We stopped by a gorgeous hotel first for some drinks and to enjoy the view (so many hydrangeas!) and then went to a teeny little seafood shack, right next to the loading docks, for the freshest seafood out there. I had an enormous lobster roll, so light and fresh, with just a little bit of mayo, celery, lemon, and paprika, along with excellent fries and everyone else went for the amazing haddock fish ‘n chips. We ate with our food propped up on the dock railing, throwing fries to obliging seagulls and watching as the seals put on a show for us below. Oh, and there may have been ice cream involved afterwards...

We ended our trip on Sunday with a great brunch at Area Four in Cambridge. I had the best egg and cheese sandwich possible with housemade sausage and English muffin and a very unique Italian-style chopped salad topped with fontina, salami, pickled banana peppers, radicchio, green beans and other interesting things that seemed odd at first but really came together wonderfully. I’ve actually been working of recreating this at home so hopefully a recipe post on that will appear soon. Our trip could not be complete without another chocolate chip cookie run, obviously, and before we knew it, we were heading back to the airport, out palates happy, our culinary minds expanded, and our pants perhaps a good bit tighter. So, until next time Boston! Cant wait to find out what you’ll feed me in the future!

Kinfolk Butcher Block Party - Pig Butchery Edition

This past Sunday I had the enormous pleasure of attending one of the Butcher Block Party events put on by Kinfolk Magazine as a part of their series of themed workshops held all over the world.  Through the months of June and July, workshops taught attendees the art of butchery and the methods that go into taking a fish, lamb, or pig, for instance, and breaking it into ready-to-cook cuts of meat. It also just so happened that they chose the small city of Charlottesville, VA (about a 2.5 hour drive away from me) as the location for a pig butchery demonstration, and I naturally had a hard time resisting the temptation to buy a ticket for such a unique event. I eventually did, of course.

I arrived at Blenheim Vineyards, the location of the event, to find a spectacular view, beautiful blue skies, and a friendly and warm welcome from the hosts of the event, Hill and Holler, Beyond the Flavor (an amazing and beautiful Charlottesville-based food blog), and James Lum and Matt Greene, the gentlemen behind JM Stock Provisions (a soon-to-be butcher shop in Charlottesville) and our butchery instructors for the day. So, I settled in with a glass of rosé and prepared for what turned out to be one of the most informative and in-depth lessons in food I’ve ever received. And to top it all off, the day did not end at the lesson itself. After the butchery demonstration, we headed outside to grill up the just-cut meat and some sausages made earlier that day with the other half of the same pig we cut up, and to enjoy a platter of James and Matt’s prosciutto, pate, and rillettes with fresh baguette.

Now, I’m not going to go into too extreme of detail about specific cuts of meat and word-by-word accounts of the lesson. You will actually see that on Beyond the Flavor's blog fairly soon. I’d rather just let the pictures do the talking. But I will give you just a few insights as to what I took away from the whole day.

The most important lesson is the sheer importance of buying meat that is local, free-range, and humanely raised and slaughtered. A gentleman from the local farm, Timbercreek Farm, where our pig grew up was there to talk to us about their practices for raising pigs and the things that make their pork so superior to commercially produced pork. Basically what it comes down to is that when pigs are happy and foraging for their food instead of penned up and living on a constant diet of corn and other grains, their meat is going to be sweeter, more flavorful, and healthier for you. Perhaps all of this is common knowledge at this point but occasional reminders are always nice and I can attest to the fact that the meat that we ate was delicious beyond words.

Also, the class really served as an aha! moment for me. Back in my restaurant-serving days, we were expected to be familiar with different cuts of meat but no matter how many times I looked at diagrams of pigs and cows, mapping out the different cuts of meat, it never clicked. Now it does. Seeing the step-by-step process and observing as the enormous half-pig turned into chops, bacon, hams, and ribs, I could finally piece together the puzzle.

All of this information also came along with tips on seasoning, cooking methods, and how to turn a less commonly used part of the pig into a succulent meal. Throw in the lovely conversations I had with the butchers themselves and other attendees about our passions for food, cooking, and local sourcing, the excellent meal, of course, and the overall pleasant backdrop of the winery, and I’d say it was quite the way to spend an afternoon!

Swiss Chard Tart with Sesame Cracker Crust

So here we are, coming to the end of June, and just like last year my family an I have reached the stage of our gardening where we find ourselves in a bit of a leafy green crisis. We can literally scalp our rows of chard and lettuce and within the week they have grown back to full size. We start to run out of room in the refrigerator, out of storage containers, out of recipes. Though I suppose I can hardly justify complaining about an overabundance of homegrown vegetables. They are gorgeous and delicious and, most notably, absolutely free so we try our best to cram them into as many dishes as possible.

We have found a winner of a recipe in the recent Martha Stewart Living Food Issue Magazine, one that can rid the refrigerator of 1.5 pounds of greens in one fell swoop and is incredibly tasty at the same time. Now, a little side note, if you haven’t picked up this magazine yet, you really should. It has become a permanent fixture on the kitchen table and I discover something new to make every time I flip though it. It also has the recipe for this one-pot pasta, which has been making quite a few appearances in the foodie blogosphere lately. It may very well be the brainchild of someone with magical powers and is revolutionary in its approach to making a pot of pasta. Everything literally cooks together in one pot – you don’t even need a colander. It stands for all things cheap, easy and fabulous and will probably become a weekly thing once our cherry tomato plants begin to burden grace it with their bounty. But back to the recipe at hand…

This here is a Swiss chard tart with sesame cracker crust. To break it down its pretty much like taking the filling of spanakopita  (the recipe actually calls for all spinach but, well, we had Swiss chard so that’s what we used) and stuffing it into a tart shell that tastes like those little sesame cracker sticks in the packs of Asian-like trail mix. You know what I’m talking about, right? The pieces that everyone picks outs out of the mix first, leaving behind the stale nori crackers and wasabi peas.

You start by making the dough for the crust, which uses a dump and stir method and it comes together in seconds. It gets rolled out, placed into a tart pan, and baked until golden and crisp. The filling is mostly the greens but they get a salty punch from feta and some nice residual heat from red pepper flakes. And when the two come together and bake until piping hot, the result is simply lovely. The green surface is speckled with the bits of red, yellow, and orange stems of the chard and the scattering of white sesame seeds. The taste borders the line between light and fresh and something that is perhaps a little naughty with its rich, flaky crust. The crust holds up really well and actually stays quite crispy even after refrigerated and heated up again in the microwave. It’s a definite best contender for an easy lunch to bring to work the next day. Because of its richness, it pairs well with something a little more acidic. A pinot grigio would be nice but I had it with

Dogfish Head Festina Peche, a brewed malt beverage with a tart and tangy taste and a lingering wheat-like finish. All in all, with a slice of this tart at hand and a cold glass of your drink of choice, this is all I want out of an early summer evening supper.

Swiss Chard Tart with Sesame Cracker Crust
serves 4-6
slightly adapted from Martha Stewart Living Magazine

Ingredients
Crust
¾ cup whole wheat flour
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp coarse salt
t Tbs. sesame seeds
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup water

Filling
1½ lbs swiss chard
1 Tbs olive oil
1 large shallot, finely diced
1 clove of garlic, minced
¼ tsp red pepper flakes
3 oz feta cheese
2 eggs, lightly beaten
½ tsp. coarse salt
½ tsp sesame seeds

Start by making the crust. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Combine the flours, salt and sesame seeds in large bowl and whisk to combine. Add in the olive oil and water and use a wooden spoon to mix together, finishing with your hands to knead it into a uniform ball. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into a circle about 2 inches wider in diameter than your tart pan (use one with a removable bottom). Fit the dough into the pan, pressing it up the sides and trimming off any excess. Prick the bottom of the dough all over with a fork and bake for about 30 minutes and let cool slightly. Once cooked, reduce the oven to 350 degrees.

While the tart crust cooks, prepare the filling. Remove the green leaves from the chard and tear them into large pieces, saving the stems. Add the leaves to a large pot with ¼ cup of water and cover. Heat on medium, stirring periodically until the leaves are wilted. Transfer greens to a sieve placed over a bowl or sink to drain the excess water and set aside. Drain any water from your pan and place over a medium heat with 1Tbs. of oil. When hot, add the shallot, garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring, until the shallot is soft, about 4 minutes. Set aside.

When the chard leaves are cool enough to handle, place themin a clean towel and squeeze it over the sink to remove the extra water. Transfer to a cutting board and roughly chop. Add to a mixing bowl with the shallot mixture, crumbled feta, eggs, and salt. Stir to combine. Add the filling to the slightly cooled tart shell and evenly press it in. sprinkle the ½ tsp. of sesame seeds overtop. Bake in the 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes before slicing.

Woodberry Kitchen and a Moscow Mule

One of the best questions anyone has ever asked me was, “What was your favorite restaurant experience?” I thought it would be a simple answer but as I sorted through my memories trying to pick out the perfect one, I realized it wouldn’t be as easy of a task as I thought. I began to see just how many factors are at play in determining a truly memorable and life-changing moment at a restaurant. It becomes so much more than just the food, though that it important as well. It involves the people with whom it was shared, or not shared at all, the circumstance in which it occurred, the service, the ambiance, etc. A best restaurant experience is a time where for the two hours or so in which it takes place, the rest of the world seems to disappear an all that matters is that moment, a moment that can never quite be matched. Really, with that said, only a handful of my experiences can be truly deemed as great.

I did have one of those memorable moments recently at a restaurant I’ve been dying to visit for a while now, Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore. I took my mom for Mother’s Day brunch. It’s a place where it is not difficult to relax, where people make great food with even better ingredients. A place where the utmost care seems to go into every little detail yet at the same time you get a sense that everyone seems to be rather care-free. A place where conversation flows easily, drifting out of the mouth and up across the high beamed ceilings and around the locally handmade glass light fixtures. Where the kitchen has nothing to hide but rather makes itself known with a roaring wood-fired oven and things like coffee and cocktails are treated as an art rather than an afterthought. Dishes are simple and need no fancy plating, further prompting sharing and appreciation of the fine ingredients. It was everything I wanted it to be and more.

I wish I could have tried so many more items on the menu but I feel like we did well with our selections. I started with a Moscow Mule, made with ginger beer, lime syrup, and organic vodka, and served in its traditional copper mug with lots of ice. Now normally I’m not a big cocktail fan and generally stick to beer but this is certainly an exception to that rule. It’s cold, it’s refreshing, it’s pleasantly spicy and packs an nice punch. My mom and I also started the meal with a simple bowl of fresh cut spring strawberries, soaked in bitters and doused with a generous spoonful of tarragon scented Chantilly cream.

My entrée was a wood-fired oven breakfast pizza with maple sausage, potatoes, cheddar cheese, pickled chiles, and two eggs, just barely set, so that the yolk oozed over the pizza like a nice rich sauce to offset the heat from the chiles. The crust was blackened and blistered perfectly and chewy and light inside. My mom got the asparagus and potato frittata, served in an individual cast-iron skillet. We ended by sharing a beautifully delicate pecan scone, served warm, and maple lattes made by their nationally acclaimed baristas. Seriously, best cup of coffee I’ve had in my life.

The meal really stayed with me a good while after the experience was all over. I craved pizza even more so than normal and dreamt of that Moscow Mule. The warmer days are approaching and I realized I needed to get a recipe figured out in preparation for the sweltering summer evenings. I’m currently at the beginning of what I think is going to be a big home-brewed soda kick (just bottled up some grapefruit-hibiscus soda yesterday) so naturally I started with a batch of ginger beer. You can find the recipe here. Once it was ready, the rest was easy – a bottle of grey goose, some limes, a batch of simple syrup. Hopefully my own concoction will tide me over until I can get over to Woodberry again. My birthday is coming up…in two months…

Moscow Mule
makes one drink

Ingredients
½ cup ginger beer (homemade is certainly not necessary. My favorite brand is Fentimans. It’s a little hard to find so Gosling's will do in a pinch)
1 oz good vodka
1-2 tsp. simple syrup (recipe here)
Lime juice

Fill a rocks glass (or a cupper mug, if you have one) with ice and pour over the vodka. Add the ginger beer, 1 tsp. of the simple syrup, and a small dash of lime juice. Stir to combine. Give it a taste and add the other tsp of simple syrup, if desired. Some ginger beers are sweeter than others so you may or may not need the extra sugar. Kick back and enjoy.

Nut and Seed Crackers (and a Year out of College)

One year ago I graduated from college, donning purple robes with 4000 others who were all equally as excited to bring a certain stage of our lives to a close. I recall wondering how many were in the same position as I, putting on a smiling face while on the inside thinking how college was just the easy part, how the elusive and supposedly worse “real world” was yet to come. I remember three days prior, after my last final exam, I came home and proceeded to have what could probably be described as a full-blown meltdown over the fact that “it’s all over!” I wasn’t really sad for the experience of college to be over. In all honesty I didn’t particularly enjoy a good portion my times at college. Mostly I was terrified, terrified that this safety net called “my education” was ripping at its seams and I was about to go tumbling out, grasping at mere loose threads, before falling into a dark and deep abyss.

So now here I sit 365 days later wondering where on earth all of that time in-between went. It’s as if I hit the bottom of that abyss, passed out and woke up one year later only to think I had slept for merely a night. It’s strange, but, although it feels like no time has passed at all, so much seems to have happened. So many things that I thought would become my entire life, I have now left behind and the things I wished to release and forget, I now embrace with all of my being. I graduated with slight feelings of regret, wishing I had done something different. I wished I hadn’t “wasted” my time on studying film and design and gone off to culinary school instead. Now, with nearly eight months of post-graduate restaurant experience under my belt I can assure you that my educational decision to keep my cooking hobby separate from my career was quite wise. During those eight months there was no light at the end of the tunnel. It was a place where crying was a normal daily occurrence and verbal abuse was accepted without restraint. There were moments where I began to think that this could actually be the norm. If I weren’t so stubborn and wanting of a genuine cause for leaving, I wouldn’t have put up with it for nearly as long as I did.

And just at the moment when I thought I could go on no longer, I didn’t have to. I landed a job using all of those skills that I learned in college. I finally got my career. And though I now spend my days sitting at a desk and staring at a computer, the very things I thought I did not want, I could not be any happier. In fact I can’t remember a time in the last few years when I have been this inexplicably happy. Maybe its because I work at a t-shirt design company where things like spirit days, mid-day bbqs, sporadic food extravaganzas, and the best coworkers exist, but that “real world” that everyone warned me about, feels like the best dream I could imagine. I know I’m in the right place, that everything it exactly as it should be, and it can only get better from here.

Which brings me to a recipe. I don’t think I’ve taken the time yet to express how much I love the The Sprouted Kitchen Cookbook. Sara and Hugh are the dynamic duo of this creation and it has become a favorite among my collection of cookbooks. I not only reach for it endlessly for recipes but also for tips to improve my photography and cooking and my ability to embrace the simpler things in life. It is truly a work of art and one of the best examples out here of the perfect combination of food and photos. I love Sara’s dedication to her husband at the beginning, that he was the one that helped her escape from a life she didn’t enjoy and lead her to one that means the world to her. I like to think that we are alike in this way, that we were both lost for a time and although we found our ways in totally different fields, we found them nonetheless.

I was flipping through the book the other day and found a recipe for “nut and seed crackers” tucked away inside the snack section. It’s an understated recipe, no picture and a very small caption about how great they are with hummus. After skimming through the ingredients list I found that I had everything I needed and a nearly empty tub on hummus I was looking to finish off.  So of course I made them. Though the recipe almost slips by unnoticed, these crackers certainly speak volumes. Made of nothing but ground up nuts and seeds and a splash of oil and sweetener, they start out as a crumbly greasy ball of dough but end up with a deep, toasty flavor and a soft delicate texture. They still have a good bit of dexterity though, strong enough to hold a hefty amount of topping and enough chew and protein to fill you up nicely. 

I tried them with hummus, per Sara’s suggestion, with much success, but tried a few other toppings too. They were nice with peanut butter and a sliver of apple and also with cream cheese and cucumber slices. But my favorite was a dreamy combo of whipped goat cheese and sliced strawberries with a good sprinkle of fresh cracked black pepper. Yes, black pepper…on strawberries. It’s weird but it works. Just how sea salt makes chocolate all the more chocolatey, the black pepper almost brightens the acidity and sweetness of the strawberry. And not only are they great for either breakfast or lunch, they are also vegan and gluten-free. Sounds like just the perfect way to start off the beginning of the 2ndyear out of college, this one looking much brighter than the first.

Sara’s Nut and Seed Crackers
slightly adapted from the Sprouted Kitchen Cookbook

Ingredients
½ cup almond meal
½ cup raw cashews
1 Tbs flaxseed meal
1 Tbs whole flaxseeds
1/3 cup sesame seeds
a sprig of rosemary
¾ tsp sea salt
1 Tbs agave syrup
1 Tbs olive oil
1-2 Tbs water

Combine the almond meal, cashews, flaxseed meal and whole flaxseeds in a food processor and pulse until the cashews resemble a meal. Add the sesame seeds, the leaves from your sprig of rosemary, ½ tsp of the salt, the agave, and the olive oil and pulse for a few more seconds until the rosemary is chopped up. Drizzle in 1 Tbs of the water and pulse until everything comes together into a ball. If it doesn’t, add more water 1 Tbs at a time until it does. Place the ball of dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

When ready, preheat the oven to 325 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out with a rolling pin. This will be easier if you put the dough between two sheets of parchment paper or plastic wrap first. Roll out to 1/8-inch thickness. If it starts to crack at the edges you can gently push it back together before continuing. Cut the crackers into whatever shape you desire. I made 10 large-ish wedge shapes but smaller crackers would be nice too. Use a spatula to transfer them to the baking sheet and bake for about 12-14 minutes until toasted and brown. Sprinkle with the remaining salt after removing form the oven. Let cool before serving with the toppings of your choice.