Lidia Bastianich at the Smithsonian Dec. 2

Heads up to all the D.C. foodies: America's Italian cooking queen Lidia Bastianich will be speaking at the National Museum of Natural History on Dec. 2 with moderator Joe Yonan, the Washington Post's food and travel editor. Sadly, I'll be in Pensacola on a work trip, but the event is open to the public and costs $25 for non-Smithsonian members.

Tickets can be purchased here.

100 foods to try before you die

My friend group has been circulating a list of 100 foods you should eat before you die. How do you stack up on this list?

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses (a pungent unpasturised French cheese.)
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda (a warm dip from the Piedmont area of Italy)
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (1/2)
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat's milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (pufferfish)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8%
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs' legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost Que?
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu (Chinese distilled alcohol)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini (Cocktail)
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

I've only had 38 1/2 (I'm counting clam chowder in a sourdough bowl as half, since I've had both of those things, but not simultaneously), which I italicized. And while I don't think I'll be sampling some of these any time soon (roadkill? wtf?) there are certainly a few I need to get cracking on!

Update: Lauren just reminded me that I've had apple wine, so make that 39 1/2.

Big ups to D.C. A Through Z

Sick of going to the same old bars in Washington D.C.? You should check out my friend Lauren's new blog, D.C. A Through Z, where she visits a place she's never been (and she's been to a lot of places!) all in the name of a good time. The catch? She's going bar-to-bar in alphabetical order.

Up now, Asylum and Bourbon, both in Adams Morgan. Look out for Chef Geoff's sometime soon.

http://dctotheletter.blogspot.com/

A permanent link to her blog should be on the left pane of this blog if you're ever searching for it.

P.S.-Does anyone know a D.C. bar that starts with X? We're thinking PX might be the best we can do for now.

BlackSalt is DC's seafood central

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Now that we're in the meat of oyster season, a few friends and I decided to go to BlackSalt, a surprisingly large restaurant space in a small strip mall up on MacArthur Blvd. in an area of D.C. called the Palisades (news to me). While not metro accessible, this place is worth the hike if only for their $1 oyster happy hour (daily from 4-7 p.m.).

The restaurant is separated into three parts. When you walk in, the first thing you see is a little seafood shop, with an impressive assortment on ice. I saw plenty of different types of fillets (even the hard-to-find monkfish), one type of whole fish and a lot of shellfish, including sea scallops (I think around $23/pound), which you can't find fresh in grocery stores right now, to my knowledge. They of course also have arrays of salts and a refrigerated shelf of less popular fish dishes (bacala was notable to me, which is apparently imported from Spain and called bacalao). Growing up, I remember my dad soaking and resoaking cod to get it just right for Christmas Eve, so if that's on your holiday menu, BlackSalt is an option.

In the next section is the bar/cafe, which looks exactly like a restaurant to me. This is where the happy hour specials occur. If you want to up the price a bit and expand the menu, you can walk even further back to the actual restaurant area.

Since there were quite a few of us, we ordered 1 1/2 dozen oysters (you have to order in half dozen increments). Additionally, all but one of the diners opted to also get the steamed blue shell mussels ($6), which come three ways: Addie's (tomato, garlic, lemon), Belgian (Maredsous ale, leeks, fumet) and Spanish (chorizo, romesco, marjoram). I opted for the Addie's, since I knew I'd regret smelling anything remotely Italian on someone else's plate and not being able to eat it. One of us decided to get the calamari ($9), which I didn't try but I'll trust her approval since she also has impeccable mojito taste.

When I got there, I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend the $8 on the mojito, which is one of my favorite cocktails. But the problem with mojitos is that most bartenders half-ass them. Not enough mint (it's too much work), not enough lime (stingy) and too much sparkling water (don't these people have any taste?). So when I arrived, I ordered the classic champagne cocktail ($5) with bitters, a sugar cube and a lemon twist. But as soon as I sipped it, even though it was good, I regretted that it wasn't a mojito. On the second round, I went for it, and I have to say this is likely the second best mojito I've had in the D.C. area behind Cafe Atlantico's. Served with a fairly generous amount of mint and limes, the drink also comes with a sugar crystal stick to sweeten it up.

First to come out was an assortment of breads (which is refilled upon request), focaccia, French and some sort of multigrain, served with a spiced olive oil. That was followed by our mussel dishes, which had a plentiful stack of mussels served in a delicious soup they were cooked in (which is why the bread refill is oh-so necessary). They were extremely tasty, and more than one of us kept eating the sauce after the mussels were gone as a soup.

The oysters were also an achievement, with three different types served on ice with lemon wedges and cocktail sauce. I wish I could recall all the types, but I do remember the Virginia oysters being hardy and meaty, and the smallest shell oysters had the most depth of flavor. Honestly, it's hard for me to find an oyster that I don't like, and who can argue with a $1 price tag? It'd have to be an oyster from the river offshore Three Mile Island for me to think twice.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Although none of us got them, there is also another $1 item on the happy hour menu, cocktail jumbo Gulf shrimp. There was also talk at the table that their crab cakes ($9) are supposedly very good.

If this place was closer to a metro stop, I'd have some sort of oyster happy hour addiction. I'd withdrawl from friends, need a 12-step program. But as it stands, it's a delicious place to head out to every once in a while, and at least I know where to go if I want fresh scallops now.

Bar Pilar: Not your average bar food

Last night, I met up with some friends and new acquaintances at Bar Pilar, a narrow space in the U Street Corridor of Washington, D.C., that frankly, I didn't even know served anything more than your average bar food and beer. I was so wrong!

When you come into Bar Pilar, seat yourself (if you can find the room). We arrived at a little after 6:30 and snagged one of the last tables. To drink, I started with Bonarda, a red 2006 wine from Argentina. It is a dark, dry red with a hint of acidity. My favorite red is a Shiraz, so I guess there's just something with me and Argentine wine.

Bar Pilar, save for one entree on the menu, does small plate dishes, so our table opted to get two each and share (ranges from $6-$10 each). We ordered crispy duck confit, broccoli sauteed in a brown butter and herbs, a lamb dog (think hot dog, but with lamb!), lemony grilled prawns, veal sweetbreads served over risotto, kohlrabi, a braised assortment of wild mushrooms and leaks, and spiny lobster tail. If it isn't already obvious, this isn't your typical bar food.

The broccoli was standard but good, with one diner observing that the brown butter herbs took on and almost cheesy flavor. The prawns were delicious, and I ate my first inside-the-head-of-the-prawn meat/organs, which were actually delicious. If this were an SAT analogy, it'd be black olives are to kalamata olives as prawn tail is to prawn head. It's just like ramping up the flavors tenfold, so if you don't like seafood, you really won't like the prawn head. But if you do, it's so tender and filled with briny deliciousness.

The mushrooms were actually good (I'm normally not a huge fan). The morels were thick and meaty, but I preferred the flavors of the sulfur tuft-looking mushrooms, which were sort of simultaneously sweet and umami.

The dish that I thought was the weakest was the sweetbreads. I've never had them before, but scooped up without the risotto, they largely lacked flavor. Sort of a disappointment since I've heard so much about how good sweetbreads are. With the risotto, they were also mushroomy and salty. Otherwise, it was just like your typical fried food with a slightly different texture than meat.

The duck confit was pretty good, with a perfectly crunchy outside yet a still well-cooked inside. The only draw back was we had to send our initial duck back because it had possibly the largest array of hairs I've ever seen on a restaurant dish. Glad one of my fellow diners figured that out before it ended up in my mouth!

The spiny lobster was interesting, with a flavor more exotic than your typical clawed lobster.

The kohlrabi is something I'd never even heard of until I saw it on the menu last night. Similar in presentation to cut and roasted potatoes, the veggie was starchy like a potato, but had a lingering vegetable flavor sort of similar to broccoli or cabbage but much milder.

The stand out dish of the night for me was the lamb dog. Served just like a hot dog, on a bun with sides of mustard and diced onion, the initial flavors of the lamb are subdued but then hit you like a train at the end when coupled with all those distinctly sausage spices. Not to mention, the way this dish is presented makes it the perfect one-off dish for late-night bar snackers. I really cannot recommend it any higher.

For dessert, our group opted for the black pepper and fig pie and the pear tart tartin, both served with scoops of vanilla bean ice cream. The pear tart was safe compared to the fig pie, and served as a perfectly sweet end to our meal. The black pepper and figs though was a challenge for your mouth. Served in a presentation that looks more like a muffin than a pie, the first bite of the dessert took me by total surprise. The pepper and the fig went together, but my tongue was just completely taken by how foreign the taste was. Though by the second and third scoop, I was a full-on black pepper with figs convert. It might take you a few tries to really love it, but I think a lot of the truly most flavorful and complex foods are like that.

In all, Bar Pilar was well above my expectations of your typical nighttime fare. Just make sure your duck is served crispy and not hairy.

A Lighter Alfredo-Style Sauce for Columbus Day

This year for Columbus Day, I decided to make some northern Italian-style food akin to fettuccine alfredo since Christopher Columbus was was Genoese. But I was trying to think of a way around making it unbelievably bad for you, so I just used a light cream instead of heavy cream and minimized the cheese. I also put some shrimp and broccoli in it. It was still yummy, so here's what you do:

Boil salted water for your fettuccine, and while that's happening, rinse your shrimp, which I then shelled after they were done being cleaned.

From WineAnother Cook

Also, I did a cheat with the broccoli at this point and heated some up in this awesome steamer courtesy of Pampered Chef. I can't stress the awesomeness of this this little device enough. I did this at this phase, because it's less busy than the seasoning that happens later, and I'd rather not be rushed!

From WineAnother Cook

At this point, my pasta was ready, so I put it in the water. Make sure your stir a lot with fettuccine! It's really starchy and sticky.

Now that the shrimp is clean, toss it in a pan with some olive oil on medium high heat. It should only need about a minute per side to be done. Then set it aside on a plate, and put some chopped up garlic in the pan.

From WineAnother Cook

Once the garlic is soft (but not burnt!) pour in some of the light cream and let it get hot and bubbly. At this point, I added a decent amount of powdered garlic to the pan to really add a uniformity to the garlic flavor. I also cracked in some black pepper and some salt. Normally, the cheese you'd put in this dish would salt it up enough, but since I'm only putting a little cheese on at the end, the dish needs salt. The most important thing as you're cooking though is to taste the sauce to see if you like it. If it doesn't taste good now, it never will!

Once it is to your liking, add back in the shrimp and broccoli.

From WineAnother Cook

Then the only cheese you need is what you put on top at the end. This way, you've made a fettuccine alfredo-type dish with zero butter, barely any oil, a lighter cream and less cheese. And you can even feel good about eating your veggies. If you hate broccoli, use peas. If you hate peas, use spinach. Whatever it is you'd like to add some green to your plate.

From WineAnother Cook

Ruth's Chris is Always a Miss

I'd opted to go to Ruth's Chris Steak House (9th St. NW DC location) for the second restaurant week place I'd eat. And after eating there, I was so utterly disappointed that I couldn't believe it. (I've received better service at McDonalds.) So when I heard that I was being forced to give it another shot for a work event this week, I thought, "This is my opportunity to blog about Ruth's Chris while giving it a chance to redeem itself." If only it did! Since I'm sensing a pattern, I figured it was time to reveal the real deal: Ruth's Chris is a joke. There, I said it.

Let's leave the food off the table for a second. Our waiter largely did! The staff for my first visit was, dare I say, rude! Not only was he incapable of bringing us the correct dishes when we were ordering off a (very) limited prix fixe-type menu, he put down the wrong items knowingly and he blatantly ignored our table when we were out of beverages, were in need of more bread and just flat out wanted what we ordered. He creepily called us all "mademoiselle" throughout the meal to boot.

My event this week had much improved service, though between courses was soooo slow! And I'm talking enough time to go walk three blocks away, repark my car so it didn't get ticketed and walk back two blocks slow, all before dessert.

Then there's the food. I've had two salads there, the wedge of iceberg with blue cheese dressing and a Caesar. I really think I could have gotten a better salad at Outback on both of these occasions, though the Caesar was heads over better. If there's anything that annoys me, it's a boring wedge salad, and the wedge was so unrefined that it seemed more suited to be a side dish to hot wings.

The first time, I had the raspberry sorbet for dessert, which was light and yummy (though, like I said, it took a while to get the right dessert in front of me). But the other night I ordered what I thought was a sure bet: cheesecake. I'm no snob. I love digging into bar food as much as the next girl. But bar food as a bar price tag. This is Ruth's Chris. You're presumably coming for an air of refinement. So when the waiter put down in front of me an approximately five-inch-diameter mini-cheesecake--not a slice, people, a whole cake!--I just thought, that's it. I might as well be at the world's nicest TGI Friday's.

That all being said, the steak is really great. The petite filet is good, but can't hold a candle to the New York strip, which is beautifully marbled in delicious fattiness. The filet came with shrimp, which was sadly overcooked and not worth the few extra bucks.

So there you go, my first scathing review. I'd love to say I'll never eat there again, but apparently that's where my office has our Christmas party. So I'll see you in a few months, Ruth's Chris. Keep that steak sizzling and amazing, because it's the only thing you've got going for you.

Five Courses Means Five Stars at D.C.'s Vidalia

Last week was Washington, D.C.'s restaurant week, a semiannual lull in the normal going out calendar that the city fills by offering a three-course lunch menu for $25 and the same for dinner for $35, give or take some change.

This year's restaurant week brought me to Vidalia, whose sister restaurant Bistro Bis was my restaurant week choice in the winter. Similar in atmosphere to Bistro Bis, Vidalia offers the perfect mood for an intimate dinner or even a small group of friends. A bigger restaurant space than some places, we were seated in a quieter side room where me and my fellow diners opted for a five-course option, available during restaurant week for $45.

Before the meal was served, our table was offered two different kinds of bread, one cornbread and the other more akin to focaccia, with a bowl of caramelized vidalia onions to top them off. I wasted my onions on the latter bread, which left the cornbread ever so slightly lacking in sweetness. However, both breads were moist and delicious on their own.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Our server and busboys were impeccable throughout our lengthy meal in rearranging our place settings to ensure we had the proper utensils and had plenty of water at the table. The server was also a great help in assisting the three of us in narrowing down their lengthy menu to the very best items.

To start, I got the cucumber soup, which was refreshing and served cold. Plated with a cluster of baby heirloom tomatoes and garnished with crumbled black olives, the dish was a good basic start to a long meal: light and cool, enabling the rest of the dishes to build in both richness and temperature.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Second, I ordered the grilled octopus, which had a great texture that shifted between crispy and buttery and was never rubbery. The cherry tomatoes served with this dish were seared and added a perfect sweet acidity to counterbalance the smooth creaminess of the avocado smeared at the bottom of the plate.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

By recommendation of our waiter, our third course was shrimp and grits. A true Southern dish on a menu that tends to lean all over the place, the grits were a revelation, completely creamy and not gritty at all. They really were more like a slightly differently flavored polenta in texture. That creaminess was counterbalanced by shrimp that had a slight bite to the outside but were perfectly cooked on the inside. If all shrimp and grits were like this dish, I might have a new favorite thing to eat.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

The fourth course was the one I'd built up most in my mind. One or two restaurant weeks ago, I ate at Jose Andres' Cafe Atlantico, where I had the most delicious cut of beef in my life: beef cheeks. I realize that most of you probably shudder at the thought, but you MUST get over this, because animal cheeks are the most amazingly decadent thing. To see if pork cheeks measured up, I ordered them at Vidalia, and just let your knife sit at the side of your plate: You don't need it at all! A fork is enough to cut this amazing meat, which I was so excited about that I forgot to photograph it until my plate was empty!

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

The cheeks were served with tiny crawfish and okra, but all I needed were the cheeks for this to be one of my favorite dishes for the night.

I threw caution to the wind (and ignored our waiter's suggestion) for dessert, choosing the dish that has a phrase irresistible to me: caramel bourbon sauce. Some girls live for chocolate; I live for the warm sugariness of caramel mixed with bourbon and cream. This sauce came in accompaniment to a warm Georgia pecan bar, dolloped with a side of what must have been homemade vanilla ice cream (I could taste the vanilla bean so strongly). This dish was as decadent as I'd hoped. I only wish it'd been served with a spoon so I could have wiped the plate clean of the ice cream.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

In all, I can't sing the praises of Vidalia highly enough. This might be the best restaurant I've gone to in D.C., and it's going to be a hard one to top. Coupled with the success of my previous meal at Bistro Bis, Jeffrey Buben now new to my list of favorite D.C. chefs.

* Sorry for the photo blurriness! I didn't want to use my flash and distract the other diners.

Poaching an egg

After I learned at Cafe Luna that I could cut my morning egg routine essentially in half by hard poaching my eggs instead of hard boiling them, I decided to take on the task myself. While boiling does have the added benefit of being able to turn on the stove and walk away, not having an egg to peel when you're done is worth the effort of standing over the stove for a few minutes.

To start out, make sure you have a few supplies: a small pan, a plate for your finished eggs, a bowl, a slotted spoon and I recommend a paper towel.

As for the ingredients, all you need are just water and eggs, and perhaps some vinegar.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Fill up your pan with an inch or so of water and put it on the stove on medium high heat. The water will be ready for the eggs when it is barely simmering.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

I just eat egg whites, but if you're a whole egg eater (as I'm sure most of you are), crack the eggs(s) into the bowl and then slide the eggs into the simmering water. If you're really concerned about your egg remaining whole, splash a little white vinegar into the pan before putting the eggs in. Then after you take them out, rinse them out in a bowl of water so they won't taste like vinegar.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

I like my eggs hard poached and not soft, so I keep them in there until they're a seriously solid white color, and usually I attempt to flip them over so they cook more evenly. Make sure the whole time that the water is just barely simmering and not actually boiling.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

After they are done, take out the eggs with a slotted spoon and place them on a dish with a paper towel to soak up the extra water. Then I just flip over the paper and put the dried eggs on the plate. I like to put a little salt on mine to give them some flavor, but feel free to put ketchup, salsa, pepper, anything at all. Even make some ham, hollandaise and and English muffin and go for a decadent eggs benedict.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Small plate after small plate at Jaleo

Sorry for the long gap between posts, but I had quite a lot of work and birthday responsibilities in this past week! One of them, fortunately, was dining at Jose Andres' Jaleo. A tapas restaurant that also serves paella, this restaurant is a good choice for a group willing to share. And thankfully, that's what we were!

After grabbing a few pitchers of sangria (watery, sad to say), we sat down at our table and were served bread with olive oil seasoned with a rosemary spring and garlic clove (WAY better if you crush open the garlic!).

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

It's going to be hard for me to run down everything that was ordered, so I'll just go over some stand out plates. Croquettes are always delicious at every tapas place ever. End of story! How hard it is to mess up something deep fried? Pretty hard. Jaleo was no exception. These were stuffed with chicken and were very moist.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

As I've said before in my blog, I'm not an egg lover. So when I took my first bite of the Spanish tortilla, my expectations were low. Though I'd seen a Made in Spain on PBS before where Andres dedicated a lot of the show to tortillas, and it did make me wonder if there was something I was doing wrong. That answer is a resounding "Yes!" I could eat plate after plate of these potato and onion-infused eggs. I don't think I've ever had a fluffier egg.

The seafood dishes were good but were overshadowed by the extremely traditional tapas. I wonder now how sublime the entire meal could have been if I'd only ordered off the tapas clasicas part of the menu.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Another stand out dish was the cauliflower with dates and olives. I'm not even a cauliflower fan, but I love keeping dried fruit around the house and olives have always been a staple for me. And while it's hard to imagine what dates with olives must taste like, I can assure you it's overall sweet and delicious.

After our tapas were done, our paella arrived. Served in giant traditional paella pans, the chicken and assorted mushroom paella was the stand out of the two plates. And I'm sad to say, the seafood once again faltered. I was so happy to see the shrimp with heads in tact, but the overall dish was perhaps the saltiest thing I've ever been served in a non-Asian restaurant, which sadly made it inedible.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

For my post-dinner birthday treat, I ordered the flan, served with Catalan cream and oranges. It was milky and perfect. The cream was the perfect mix of light and sweet, and the dish overall was easy to eat even on our extremely full stomachs.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Even though the seafood dishes were nothing to write home about, Jaleo was a great choice for a meal with a lot of friends.

Millions of courses at Vermilion

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Last night, I had the opportunity to dine at a Washingtonian 2008 Top 100 restaurant, Vermilion, located on King Street in Old Town Alexandria. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos because my guest diners were all business associates that I was meeting for the first time, so I didn't think it would be appropriate.

The decor is typical Old Town, rough and exposed brick, candled tables and walls lined with bottles of wine, all packed into a narrow and no doubt old building.

Our server started us off with slices of fire toasted pita bread and an assortment of olives in olive oil. The bread was crispy and a little ashy, and the olives were delicious. Though how the two correlated is beyond me. The bowl of olives didn't come with a spoon, so they were difficult to fish out, and the kalamata olives weren't pitted and couldn't easily be smashed or placed on the bread.

Then we were served a basket of rosemary bread with butter. The rosemary bread was tasty, and the butter balanced out its slight dryness.

Courtesy of the chef, we were then served shot glass sized servings of cold pea soup topped with a little creme fraiche and a dot of oil on top. Honestly, the flavor was fresh but since the soup was chilled, the texture came off as too coarse and fibrous.

For my entree, I ordered the Virginia-raised bison skirt steak with smokey short rib polenta agnolotti, oven dried tomatoes and basil ($27), which I paired with a glass of my favorite red, shiraz ($7.50). The bison, which I ordered medium rare, was flavorful and plentiful on the dish. It was cooked perfectly in thin strips with very red centers. The smokiness of the short rib agnolotti was overpowering when compared to the creamy polenta, which also formed the foundation of the plate, but it was bold and interesting next to the bison. Ultimately the dish was good, but I found it odd that the bison took a back seat to the flavors of the agnolotti.

For dessert, I ordered the French toast cubes, which came in thick 2-inch perfect square cubes, fried and topped with powdered sugar. The cubes were plated atop drippings of maple mascarpone, and sweet hazelnuts and caramelized pineapple. The dish was dry because of the very minimal amount of the mascarpone, which was barely recognizable flavor wise. The pineapple could have been more plentiful to help bring some more moisture to the dish. In all, my problem with this dessert is the same problem I have with most nice restaurants: Decadence and flavor took a back seat to presentation.

Overall, Vermilion is a beautiful restaurant with a great wait staff, and the many breads and soups brought out make you feel like you're in for a treat. But the overall flavors of each dish are a little too disjointed for me.

The Times Names its New Food Critic

The New York Times just announced its replacement for Frank Bruni:

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/sam-sifton-is-named-restaurant-critic-for-the-times/?hp

Tackling D.C.'s Tackle Box

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

This weekend I went down to the Georgetown waterfront in D.C. to sample the menu at Tackle Box, located right next to the more expensive Hook, both owned by the Pure Hospitality Restaurant Group.

Less like your standard upscale District restaurant and much more like a random crab house you'd find in Ocean City, Maryland, Tackle Box is a small space filled with picnic tables that you'll likely have to split with other patrons. The big tip off that this place wants you to feel like you're at the beach is the music. Sublime, Bob Marley and Jimmy Buffet (least favorite musician ever and bane of my existence) float through the air as you decide what to eat.

A long-time sucker for lemonade, I opted for the (expensive!) strawberry lemonade for $4.50, which was syrupy and definitely bad for you.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

The fish dishes are pretty reasonably priced. My only beef with the menu was that I really wanted shellfish, and that was almost all fried. (I generally find fried fish as a waste of really good fish!) I figured if I was going to go fried, I might as well get something that's unavailable broiled or baked, so I went for the clam strips. For my two sides, I got sweet potato fries and a salad and a dipping sauce of spicy marinara, the entire dish costing $13.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

The salad was the second most disappointing salad I've ever eaten (first prize goes to a night out gone awry that ended up at Bennigan's ...). The dressing seemed like a thinned out mayonnaise, creamy yet flavorless.

The sweet potato fries and clam strips were delicious. They were perhaps the only truly good sweet potato fries I've ever had, tasty and just salty enough. The fish tasted fairly fresh (I'm not sure I could say the same for the fried bay scallops my friend ordered, which were a little briny), but the marinara wasn't where it could have been flavorwise. Rarely do I say that a sauce would benefit from more salt (oversalting Italian food is a giant peeve of mine), but it would have. That being said, I'm one picky pasta sauce girl, so maybe this marinara isn't so bad for your average eater.

Overall, the food was decent enough for its price and the strawberry lemonade was a sugar coma. I'm sure if the place had a liquor license a little rum in it would have brought me to the place Tackle Box was trying to take me--3 hours east to the beach.

Top Chef!

Just a heads up: Everyone's favorite cooking competition, Top Chef, is premiering August 19 at 9 p.m. on Bravo. This season brings chefs to Las Vegas, where Padma, Tom and I'm guessing Gail will return to our TV screens to judge who can make the final cut.

Presto! A fast and easy pesto

Cooking Italian food is second nature to me. I don't need recipes, and I don't need too much thought to put together a dish. Growing up roughly 25 percent in a house where both my mother and father excelled at Neapolitan-style food meant to me that any sense of culture I had was given to me through cooking. I remember getting a little choked up the first time I made marinara sauce (or gravy, as it's called in my house) at college just because the smell made me feel at home.

That all being said, my family never made a pesto. The dish originates from the Genoa region, the root of the word referring to a pestle, which is how the sauce is traditionally made.

It being the 21st century, I used a food processor, which can pump out a pesto for you in about 3 minutes.

Like I said, I'm not going to measure out any of these ingredients. This is what I used:

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

2 cloves of garlic (1 if you're sensitive to the flavor, but I love garlic)

olive oil

about 2 cups of basil leaves

a handful of pine nuts

about a 2 1/2 by 1-inch cube of romano cheese

(Can coat probably 4 servings of pasta)

I really recommend to anyone that cooks a lot of Italian food or wants to make pesto sort of frequently to get a basil plant. They need a lot of sunlight, but that's about it. I've found of all the plants I've had that they are the easiest in terms of upkeep.

If you really trust your food processor to shred the hell out of the cheese for you, then you don't have to pre-shred it yourself with a grater. Otherwise, I'd recommend shredding it beforehand. (This is also the obvious choice if you're going the pestle route.) The cheese is the binding agent of this dish, so when the cold pesto hits the hot pasta, it will stick when the cheese melts.

The rest of it really doesn't get much harder than putting all the ingredients in the processor (olive oil last, about a 7 count) and shredding them up! To get the pesto out of the processor, I recommend using a spatula to get out every last bit of basil.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

I put my pesto on top of some fettuccine and had it for lunch. But don't limit your pesto making to pasta or even Italian food. You could substitute the olive oil for butter and make some pesto garlic bread out of it. Pesto works well on pizza dough, which you could cut in small pieces and top with melted cheese as an appetizer. I've even taken a mixture of rosemary, parsley and mint and used that in place of basil and encrusted some lamb with it.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Look for that Tackle Box post soon. Next weekend, I'll be reviewing D.C. food star Jose Andres' Jaleo.

Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you, Julia

FYI: Borders has a great deal on Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Volumes 1 and 2 are available for $19.99, and if you sign up for a Borders card, you can get all 1,200 or so pages for about $15.

Skip the Food, Pass the Guinness

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

I don't make it a practice to venture into Maryland, which will sound hilarious to anyone living outside the D.C. Metro area. For all of you in the know though, you understand the horrors of the words Beltway traffic. Interested in grabbing a bite to eat between two different workshops I attended for my job on the same day and completely adverse to the idea of trying to drive back to Virginia only to have to turn back around immediately, my friend recommended that I try The Irish Inn at Glenn Echo in Maryland.

Perhaps the cutest little Irish place in the world, the outside of the Inn is a large, beautiful, almost shabby chic yellow house that anyone with a right mind would love to live in. The place is so spacious because in actuality, it is two places in one. Once you enter, you can choose either the pub door or the restaurant door. In a rush, I chose the pub.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

My friend had pumped me up for the Kildare Melt, real ham, tomatoes, caramelized onions and Irish Cheddar with Guinness mustard. Unfortunately, that menu was unavailable, so I got to eat off the proper dinner menu. Not wanting to break the bank (especially since it's not my bank, it's my job's), I ordered the Irish hamburger. Also topped with Irish cheddar and Guinness mustard, I figured it was the next best thing.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

I'm sorry to report that I can't say I was wowed. It was a burger, totally standard. The mustard was good, but difficult to detect among all the different flavors, and I didn't really taste anything all too special about the cheese. The fries were pretty good though, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I love all fries more than all burgers. However, if this place has anything, it's atmosphere. As soon as you walk in the pub, you can forget about that cute little yellow house you just saw outside. This place is full of "My Goodness, My Guiness" posters and is basically only a small bar and a bunch of tables, no pretenses.

The regulars were greeted by name by the staff, and the people watching was great. I sat down next to an old man (I believe English, but I don't have all my accents down) that was sharing a few drinks with an American friend, and perhaps coworker. When the bartender asked them if they wanted a food menu, I got a kick out of them saying, without any sense of humor, "No, we're just drinking today."

The American, a downtrodden middle-aged man, freely called any woman any of his friends were married to "bitches," praised aloud his gratefulness about not being a father and referred to one particularly annoying friend's wife as a "red-headed," I believe stout, woman. Seeing a stranger sitting down at not even close to the end of the day with a friend, sharing a few pints of Guinness and Irish coffee and talking about the dangers of women and money tickled me completely.

I'll depart with a few words of wisdom from the man next to me at the bar. When I asked for my check, the Englishman bent toward me, showing his yellowed bottom teeth has he said, "How was the hamburger?" I replied that it was alright, but that the mustard was interesting at least. It had Guinness in it. "The mustard really has Guinness in it? Interesting. I usually avoid the food at this place." Spoken like a true regular.

The menus for the Irish Inn can be found at its Web site, http://www.irishinnglenecho.com.

I'll be back at some point to review Georgetown's Tackle Box lobster shack and hopefully give you the downlow on how to make a pesto this weekend!

Food for Thought

I haven't made it all the way through yet, but there's a pretty good NY Times magazine article up on their Web site about how the notion of what cooking is has transformed in America. Parts of it are making me wish I was in a kitchen right now (The first time I successfully flipped a Spanish tortilla in the air, I cried out a loud, unrestrained, "Yes!") and the other parts are making me realize that I sadly don't cook enough (hello, rotisserie chicken in my fridge right now). It's worth the read for anyone that enjoys back to basics cooking:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

In another note, if you're in the D.C. area, you can see Julia Child's kitchen in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. It's worth it!

Keep Cool the Florida Way: Key Lime Pie!

I think it's fitting that my first recipe post is key lime pie. I grew up in Florida and lived in the state for 13 years, so I'm very familiar with the food. And of all the places I've been on vacation, Key West stands out in my mind the most.

A refreshingly cool dessert, key lime pie is traditionally made with key limes, which are basically impossible to find in stores. Much smaller than regular limes, I hear that (should you be able to find them) it takes between 20 and 25 limes to get the juice needed for this recipe.

I based my recipe off the one at Joe's Stone Crab, actually located in Miami. (The restaurant is a favorite of Bobby Flay, who claims the place's stone crabs are one of his all-time favorite dishes.) I've never eaten at the place, but I have had the key lime pie at Sloppy Joe's on Duval Street, possibly the most famous restaurant on what is definitely the most famous street on the key. Served way colder than what you'll find labeled key lime pie in your grocery store, the following dish is sweet, tart and most importantly refreshing.

The ingredients:

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

For this dish, you will need:

1 cup of lime juice (6-8 limes)

zest of half a lime
2 cans of evaporated milk, unsweetened (I used half fat free to make the dish a touch healthier)

5 egg yolks

5 tbsp. butter

10 graham crackers

1/4 cup sugar for the crust

1/2 cup sugar for the filling

whipped cream (optional)

The supplies you will need include:

knife

microplane zester

fork

whisk

plastic bag

rolling pin

two bowls for mixing

12-inch pie tin

sheet of wax or parchment paper

cooling rack

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

I'd recommend starting the dish by zesting 1/2 a lime and then juicing the limes, since this can be fairly time consuming if you don't have a juicer. Rub the rind of the lime against the microplane until you get 1/2 of the outside of one of the limes into one of your bowls. You might have to use a finger to get it off the zester, since limes are so moist.

The best way to get the most juice out of a lime is to nuke it in the microwave for 30 seconds and then massage the fruit against the counter to get the juices flowing. You can also ensure you're picking a juicy lime at the grocery store by taking the limes that seem heaviest for their size.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Once this is done, cut the limes in half and squeeze over a measuring cup. Limes are so small, you can actually get almost all the juice out by turning the fruit halves inside out and squeezing out even more juice. And actually, wouldn't these make really cute little shot glasses for Cinco de Mayo? They sort of look like little sombreros.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Using this method, it took me only 6 limes to get 1 cup of juice. Set aside your juice and your bowl of zest for later.

Now take your 10 graham crackers and place them in your sealable plastic bag. Then take your rolling pin and basically beat the hell out of your bag of crackers! By the end of the process, your baggy should be full of delicious graham cracker crumbs.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

As you are beating up your graham crackers, you can place your clean bowl (without any zest in it) in the microwave and melt the butter completely. Then pour the cracker crumbs into the butter bowl and mix with your fork until all the crumbs are slightly moist. Then add 1/4 a cup of sugar to the mixture and stir until uniformly distributed.

Pour your mixture into a greased 12-inch pie tin. I found the easiest way to press the crumbs into a crust shape is to place wax or parchment paper over the pile and press with your hands into the tin until the crumbs are creeping all the way up the sides of the dish. (Make sure to press on a flat surface or your pie crust could go flying!)

Put the crust into the oven for 8 minutes. The graham cracker crust should slightly change color during that time.

Meanwhile, take your bowl of zest and put in just the yolks of five eggs. (You can separate out the whites into another dish if you wish to use them immediately for another dish or you can let the whites go down the drain.) Beat the yolks for a bit with the whisk until they look a little aerated and bubbly. Then pour in the two cans of milk, 1/2 cup of sugar and cup of lime juice, whisking as you go.

Once the crust is finished cooking, pour in the filling, making sure not to overfill the dish. (This will make it EXTREMELY hard to maneuver the uncooked pie around.) If you want to avoid having a potentially huge mess on your hands, I recommend placing a cookie tin on the bottom rack of the oven and the pie tin (using your bare hands is easiest at this stage, I promise) on the top rack above it. This way, if it drips or if you spill at all, you don't have a disgusting oven. Cook the dish for another 10 minutes.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Now this is the hardest part of the entire dish: Ever so carefully, take the pie (which should still be fairly watery) out of the oven (oven mitts this time, since it's hot) and place it on a cooling rack. If you don't spill, pat yourself on the back, because I sure did! If you do, a little napkin to clean the tin (and the counter) makes the pie look the same once it's done.

Let the pie cool until it is room temperature. Then--get this--put it in the freezer! I was majorly skeptical of this step. The closest thing in consistency to this pie that I've made before is my mother's coconut custard pie (delicious), and that condensed milk dish requires way more cooking and absolutely no freezing. But think of your key lime pie as a cold treat on a hot day and stick it in the freezer! It takes about two hours to solidify. Take it out to thaw just a bit, for about 15-20 minutes, before serving.

The result: a delicious summer pie!

To plate it, I placed some whipped cream I had in the fridge on top and placed a slice from one of my left over limes and some zest on top.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

In my next blog, read about my dinner adventure at The Irish Inn at Glenn Echo, Maryland.

Washington D.C. Restaurant Week is Upon Us

While it seems the official dates for this summer's restaurant week in D.C. were leaked last week, today is the offish day for all the info to come out.

Expect some more activity sometime today at this link: http://www.opentable.com/promo.aspx?pid=68&ref=298&m=9

Hotel Food, Savannah Style

Being able to travel for your job is an unbelievable perk: the flight, the hotel and the food, all free. However, it does require that a lot of your meals are more about eating on the go wherever you can fit it in your schedule. For my trip to Savannah, that meant breakfasts at the Hilton DeSoto on East Liberty Street and a lunch at the Westin on Hutchinson Island.

I must confess that Southern food is not my favorite style of cooking. Not a lover of sweet tea and a firm believer that gravy is brown, I just didn't grow up with foods reinforcing the region's take on food.

That being said, food is usually done best when it has a home field advantage. Just like how you wouldn't order Italian in an Irish pub, I see little point in stomping my feet for brown gravy in the South.

Breakfasts at the Hilton ($11 all you can eat and free for those with Hilton Honors Rewards) are perfect for travelers. Way better than what you'd get at a standard continental, the buffet had tons of fresh fruit, lox, capers, cream cheese, brie, muffins, bagels, oatmeal, cereal, french toast, you name it. The servers will even bring you eggs any style, omelets and pancakes if you ask.

Since this is the South though, I opted for biscuits and gravy, grits, bacon, home fries and some fruit to balance it all out.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

The meal varied from day to day depending on how long ago the buffet was refreshed. On day one, my home fries were hard and a bit stale and the biscuits also hard and overcooked. However, on day two they were fluffy and more like what I'd expected. I still maintain that white gravy is a little creepy, but I think I may have been won over by this classic breakfast combo.

The grits were, well, gritty, but I must say that they were way better than any grits I'd ever had before. In college, I'd get them for midnight breakfasts at the student union (like sand thrown in a watery mush) and I've sampled them in Charlottesville, Va. before (like sand creamed into butter). The mixture for these was stiff, but not watery, and the texture actually didn't seem like sand at all (high standards, I know). I didn't flavor them with anything, but perhaps if I did, I would understand this dish way more.

My last on-the-go hotel dish in Savannah was at the Westin's restaurant. Aqua Star. And I must say, this place was a steal (so glad I didn't get the concession stand crap I ate at the conference and went here instead). For only $11, I ordered the most refined meal I'd gotten yet in Savannah.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

I ordered the crab cake sandwich, served on a cheese-infused biscuit with crispy onions, tomato, lettuce and a very mild tartar sauce. Not only did this thing look amazing, it tasted great too. The crab was in that same Savannah style that I've tasted time and again on my trip, and the biscuit was perfectly moist. The onions were a little difficult to taste with all the other flavors that were happening on the plate, but they added to the texture a bit.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

One of my favorite things about this dish though was that skewered through the toothpick holding the sandwich in place was pickled okra. I'd only ever had fried okra before, but I thought it was unbelievably clever to use okra instead of your standard pickle. Just in case you forgot where you were (and how could you with the telltale Savannah trio of crab, biscuits and cheese), the okra was there to remind you. Savannah is even able to put its special touch on what is usually the hotel food battle of the bland.

Now that I'm home, check back for a post later this week on finally making that key lime pie.

Candy Kitchen Makes Savannah the Real City that Never Sleeps

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

As a child, I was never exposed to the movie Willy Wonka, so I have no bizarre emotional attachment to notions of golden tickets, oompa loompas or chocolate rivers. So when I finally got around to watching the movie at 21 or so, I was more thoroughly creeped out than enchanted. But walking through Savannah’s Candy Kitchen on the historic waterfront made me realize what it is that draws children generation after generation to that bizarre movie: the candy of course!

On our last night in Savannah, we walked into the Kitchen in search of some post-dinner gelato. These little shops serving the icy Italian concoction seem to pop up every few blocks in Savannah. Though certainly not a regional dish and not traditional either, it makes total sense amid the humidity and heat of thick Southern night air. If anything, a tiny plastic spoonful of the stuff is exactly what you need to relax after the sun goes down (and I bet the extra sweet creaminess gelato offers gives it an obvious edge over ice cream for the local waistlines).

I had the good fortune of getting in line a moment after approximately 10 children, likely all between 8 and 12 and oddly all parentless, decided the best way to spend their night was to sample every flavor the store had to offer. While this was mildly annoying, it was also the perfect sight. Seeing all those kids huddle around shouting for their favorite flavor instantly set the mood to what might be the most impressive candy store spread I’ve ever seen.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

I got a small half-pannacotta half-pistachio cup, the pannecotta practically indiscernible from sweet cream flavored straciatella I’ve ordered during past gelato runs. The Candy Kitchen has both flavors, so it’d be interesting to taste test them next to each other. The pistachio half might have been the best gelato decision I’ve ever made. The complex nuttiness of the dish gave a bold edge to what could have easily been a fairly standard cold dairy confection.

Gelato in tow, I could now wander around the rest of the store. This is where the Willy Wonka side of things steps in. Machines shooting out roll after roll of taffy into giant bins, wheels churning velvety vats of what will turn into fudge, 10-foot-long trays of caramel and pecan treats, this place has enough sugar in it to keep a kindergarten class on a week-long bender.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

What might be the most impressive sight in the entire store are the trays of candied apples available at another counter toward the middle of the giant store. In fact, calling anything else a candied apple after seeing these teeth rotting monsters almost seems silly. Apples bigger than softballs, The Candy Kitchen dips and decorates them in numerous types of caramel and chocolate. Some are even studded with M&Ms.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

And if your caffeine fix isn't through by the time you've devoured the store's chocolaty treats, the store also has a few prepackaged items, including Paula Deen's brand of coffee.

In all, The Candy Kitchen proved to be not only delicious but necessary for making it through the hot night air back to our hotel.