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.