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I'm in foodie heaven, and everyone here seems to be Japanese!
My girl bought me early birthday/Christmas gifts last Friday. I received an amazing new rice cooker, the Zojirushi Micom NS-TGC10 fuzzy-logic cooker. It’s incredible! It has settings for brown, white, sticky rice, and porridge (risottos, puddings, cereals). It will even bake a cake! A cute feature: it plays the “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” melody when it starts and “Amaryllis” when it stops. So far I’ve made brown rice, sushi rice, basmati rice, and steel-cut oats, and that’s only since Friday!
The other gift I got was a Mr. Bento Japanese lunch jar. The Mr. Bento is a stainless steel thermos with little Tupperware-like containers inside. One is made just for rice, another just for soup (has a no-leak gasket), and the other two are for side dishes. It even came with its own metal spork and spork cover! I packed my first bento today. It had a couple of rice balls, baby carrots, a sliced up orange, and a bowl of miso soup. Now I’m fascinated by the art of bento and am collecting little cutters, molds, and other goodies to help me build a better bento. Geeky, maybe, but fun!
Where I ate in NYC
Nino’s Tuscany Ristorante Italiano
My rating: 4 out of 4 stars
Why: Food, service, ambience were all stellar. I’ve never had a pasta dish as good as the handmade spinach papardelle with truffles and truffle oil with steamed asparagus. All four courses were consistently excellent, and the service was clearly a cut above anything I experienced while in New York.
My rating: 2.5 out of 4 stars
Why: There was a lot of food and the price was low, but the fdishes weren’t beautifully presented nor were they particularly tasty. The service was solicitous and the restaurant was lovely, however.
My rating: 3 out of 4 stars
Why: Very trendy, hip place. Too much so for my comfort, actually. Food was beautifully presented and delicious, too. Prices weren’t bad considering the rent they must pay. Service was quite good given the high traffic.
My rating: 3 out of 4 stars
Why: This restaurant gets the benefit of the doubt for sheer history and ambience and for the European-quality service. They do not, however, get any extra credit for high-quality food, because that was notably absent. I didn’t see anything on the table that I couldn’t get at any fine Italian dining establishment. You go for the cariactures and potential celeb sightings, not extraordinary food.
My rating: 2.5 out of 4 stars
Why: Reasonable prices, good food, solid service, but nothing worthy of real note here. I rather liked the hazelnut gelato offered for dessert, though.
My rating: 3 out of 4 stars
Why: The desserts really are good, but the best in the world? Nah. Not really. The counter girls are appropriately surly, and they don’t accept credit cards. Take your cash with you.
My rating: 3 out of 4 stars
Why: The buttercreme frosting is quite yummy yes, but are those cupcakes worth $2 a pop? I don’t think so. The cakes themselves are unremarkable.
My rating: 2 out of 4 stars
Why: You guys just aren’t that busy. Wipe the tables down! The bagel with cream cheese and lox was pretty tasty, though.
My rating: 1.5 out of 4 stars
Why: I can’t remember anything about this meal (what I ate, what it tasted, looked, or smelled like) except the service. They took too long to take our order, but once they did, they were extremely attentive. The theme of my trip to New York was high quality food servers, and this place was no exception. Since I can’t remember the food, I’m going to assume that it was forgettable and rank my meal accordingly, however.
Autumn Harvest Feast
This past weekend, Lex and I took a trip with Carrie and Kathy to Larriland Farms, a pick-your-own farm. It was the last weekend of the season, so we got in under the wire. While there, we picked up fresh apple cider, three jars of fruit jams and preserves, a couple of pie pumpkins, four acorn squash, a whole bunch of spinach picked from one of their fields, some homemade fudge and homemade fruit treats. On the way home, I was inspired by all the beautiful fall foliage to make an autumn-themed meal using all the vegetables I’d just purchased.
Yesterday’s dinner consisted of the following menu:
Sausage-stuffed acorn squash
Wilted garlic spinach
Savory mashed pumpkin
Sweet potato biscuits
Pumpkin bars (for dessert)
Sparkling apple cider (Just added club soda to the fresh cider and served cold)
My personal verdict:
Loved the sausage-stuffed squash. The savory sausage and the sweet squash was a good combo (not unlike applesauce and pork chops). The spinach was also a winner. Anything with that much garlick (12 cloves to 1.5 lbs of spinach befor the wilt) can’t lose! I enjoyed the mashed pumpkin, but Lex said it was “too exotic” for her palate. I might try mixing the pumpkin with potatoes next time and see if that helps her enjoy it more. I like squash, though, so this worked for me. If you like zucchini casserole, then you’ll like this. The biscuits were total losers! Sweet hockey pucks. I probably overhandled the dough, which didn’t help, but they were going to be heavy no matter what I did. Using yams in place of milk is NOT a winning combo when trying to come up with a light and fluffy biscuit. Another mistake I made: dropping them instead of rolling and cutting. This needs to be a THIN biscuit if it’s going to work at all. I ended up tossing these out. The pumpkin bars ended up more like cake primarily because I used too small a pan. My complaint about this recipe is the high level of oil used in it. They seemed a bit greasy to me. Finally, I enjoyed my little apple cider “mocktail.” The club soda cut some of the sugar in the cider, which was intensely sweet, and the drink helped to set off what was-on the whole-not a light meal. This is definitely “comfort food,” though certainly not the usual fare.
phood is good...
phood made from a fantastic restaurant is better.
So I haven’t written anything in a really long time. But I thought I might write a little blurb right now.
Last Tuesday, I went to a restaurant with ‘the gang’ in Georgetown. It’s called Filomena’s and let me tell you….fantasimigorical. I hope that link works, first time trying it. First of all it’s a cute place where they make all the pasta fresh and decorate like crazy for whatever season is around. Halloween decorations were everywhere. Very cool. But let’s talk about the PHOOD.
This is what we ordered…me and the boys:
Sfogliatina drool
Calamari Fritti (exceptionally good although it’s just fried calamari)
Then for whatever reason, the boys all got the same thing Tonno Grigliato con Spinaci e Cipolline and I got the Costoletta di Vitello alla Parmigiana. Let me tell you. The veal was crazy big. Seriously, they brought out an oval plate that was like 12 inches long and 8 inches wide. The veal basically filled the whole plate…it could feed 4 people, I swear. And let me tell you…it was soooo good. Even reheated!
The moral of the story is…next time you all want to have some Italian and want to trek on down to Georgetown, we’re SO going there.
ze paaaaaancaaaake haaaaaus
We went to the Magnolia Pancake Haus for breakfast this morning and I had the Apfel Pfannekuchen and it was just like being home in Germany again.
It was soo big tho. I couldn’t finish it. And you know something is good when you get pissed off when you can’t finish it all.
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