Author: foodnerd

wildfire


Went to Wildfire a while ago with jB on the recommendation of friends. It’s supposed to be a 40s style supperclub, so of course I was hoping for actual dancing and waitstaff in faux-40s outfits, but I guess you can’t have everything. It’s got just a whiff of the chain that it is, but you can’t argue with gorgeous fat steaks and Basil Hayden bourbon and clams crusted with buttery horseradish crumbs and run under the fire. Good food, and just the ticket for certain sorts of occasions.

avec

Went out with a friend on Saturday evening; we wanted to go to Blackbird, but couldn’t get a reservation, so we went to Avec and sat at the bar. The space really is cool, feels like a sauna with all that wood on the walls and ceiling, and it’s remarkably tiny for such a high-quality kitchen. However, the hipster see-and-be-seen quotient is enough to make you gag. Happily, we’d already had two dirty martinis apiece at Gene & Georgetti’s so we were tiddly enough to just ignore everyone. Except the guy to my left, who kept getting plates of things that smelled amazing, so I kept leaning over to bother him and find out what they were. Thanks to him, we ordered an extra unplanned dish that turned out to be one of my two favorites of the evening, a buckwheat pasta with red-wine braised rabbit. Simple, light but intensely savory, a wonderful combination of subtle flavors.
The other favorite was another simple thing, a shaved apple and celery salad, with slivers of manchego and a cider vinaigrette. I immediately ran out the next day to buy a bunch of celery to go with the apples in my fridge.
There was also some crispy-fried flanken short rib in harissa aioli, very nice, and chorizo stuffed dates with bacon and a piquillo pepper sauce (hubba hubba), and some lovely soft blood sausage with apples and watercress. Our other entree was the oven roasted pork shoulder, which was utterly monstrous. Huge. Bizarrely enormous for this kind of restaurant. And almost completely meat — there wasn’t nearly enough of the very tasty sauerkraut to properly accent each bite of meat, and the two of us together didn’t have a prayer of finishing off that pork. I took the remains home, and ate it for lunch today, and even that mere fraction was filling. Yummy though. 😉
We had some cheeses to finish, a garrotxa, a pave d’auge that was okay, and an epoisses that I enjoyed but my friend found too stinky. And then we lurched home to lie down and groan. Note to self: no meals too delicious to stop eating after knocking back two martinis and about 8 giant olives. Ooof.

turkey perfection


The annual brick oven turkey was freaking awesome this year — we have hit upon the perfect formula. If one pound of bacon was good, two pounds of bacon is better. You get fantastically crunchy mahogany skin, moist smoky well-seasoned meat, and that inner layer of bacon isn’t too burned to eat either, if you let the temp get a bit lower at the start than we have at times in the past. Woo, baby! Yum.
So obviously I’ve been eating the leftovers this week, along with lunches from where else, Perez. Very nice pork chops braised in spicy sauce yesterday — $6 for two hot lunches, can’t beat it.

broccoli blue cheese soup

one bunch broccoli
3 chunky slices blue cheese
half and half
salt, pepper & nutmeg
Boil the broccoli until just tender. Drain, but reserve some of the cooking water. Puree with stick blender, and add half and half gradually to get desired consistency, adding cooking water instead if you think it’s too overwhelmingly creamy. Add blue cheese, crumbled up, and let the residual heat melt it — use a spoon to sort of mush it into the soup. Salt & pepper to taste, dash of nutmeg.
It’ll be a bit tepid, so you might want to reheat a bit, but be careful not to boil or it’ll curdle. You might get around this by using heavy cream and a bit more cooking water, but i had leftover half and half.
Serves two for dinner, 6-8 as a small starter. Yum.
(picture coming)

alnatura leberwurst


mmmmm, liverwurst. I got a jar of organic Alnatura leberwurst while in Germany over the summer, and i’ve been eating it for lunch this week. It’s almost as good as the transcendently delicious stuff that H bought for us at his local butcher during our visit. Rough textured, meaty, soft and melting, with a bit of spice. I guess that I am going to have to have H and spleen bring it back for me whenever they go back and forth to the old country…

the chipp inn

I found a great friendly dive bar near my house called the Chipp Inn. Great juke full of old standards, R&B, disco, reggae and a few 80s pop hits, and a friendly bartender with a wide selection of cheap local lagers, mexican beer, and german brews. But the truly brilliant part is the fact that every hour or so a dude comes through selling homemade tamales out of an igloo cooler, $5 for a whole baggie full and some killer spicy green salsa. My kinda place. (i ate the tamales for breakfast today and forgot to take a photo of them first. oops.)

so so wrong

Today I went to the crappy supermarket near the office to buy papertowels and milk for the coffee, and at the checkout there was an exhortation to buy some “Santa Dollars” to support charity. I had to look more than twice to make sure what I was seeing was real, but Santa Dollars are legitimate US currency, in $1 denominations (you pay $2, therein the profit for charity), with the rosy smiling face of SANTA fucking CLAUS on the bill in place of George Washington. I wish i was kidding.