A food filled trip that will knock your Sox off...Four days of food in the Boston area

So when my younger sister called me and told me she was being sent to Boston for work and was going to be put up in a suite while there, I jumped at the opportunity to live the high life and stay in this luxury with her. And when I say high life, I mean it...I spent all four days eating as much as my appetite would allow.

The summer before my senior year of college, I lived in Sommerville with some friends that attended Tufts. While I lived there, I think I ate the Tuna Cheddar Melt at Tasty Gourmet at least twice a week. I remembered it being this incredible tuna salad sandwich. What made it so extraordinary? It was topped with this chili-dijon sauce that was sweet, spicy, and salty all in one. So, I felt the need to go back and see if this sandwich was as good as I remembered it. Don't get me wrong this is a high caliber tuna salad sandwich, but it was not quite as good as I remember it. I think that back in the day they applied the chili dijon a bit more liberally and I was left wanting more last week. Regardless, it was a fun little trip down memory lane and I still want to buy buckets of that chili-dijon sauce.

Memories

The place I was looking forward to the most on this trip was my next stop, Neptune Oyster. In the past year, my most prevalent food quest has been the hunt for the perfect lobster roll. Every true New Englander that I have mentioned this to has said "that's easy the best lobster roll is at..." and inserted their favorite spot located anywhere from Maine to Nantucket. When more than one person told me that Neptune Oyster had the best roll, I knew I had to stop in the next time I was in Boston and judge for myself. So, that's how I found myself sidling up to the adorable little bar/counter of this quaint little spot. I loved the feel of the place with its subway tile walls and white marble counter. And then to boot, they had a variety of local beers available and on display on a little lazy susan sitting at the bar. Everything on the menu sounded so delicious that we decided to go with two appetizers and a lobster roll each. To begin, we had the Yellowtail Hamachi Tartare with mint kimchi, cucumber, lime and sea salt. And because I can't go to any restaurant (even a seafood one) and see pork on the menu without ordering it, we also had the Neptunes on Piggyback - two fried oysters on pulled pork atop a piece of toast topped with this delightful golden raisin sauce. It was indeed an interesting little flavor combination that just really worked. I would certainly order this again. Okay, so the lobster rolls. Neptune offers two options - hot or cold. I think the chef must have had as hard a time as I did deciding which one was better, gave up trying to decide, and ended up just putting both on the menu. After I had a bite of each, my only reaction was wow. The lobster on both rolls was perfectly cooked soft, sweet lobster meat. The lobster on the cold roll had a gentle application of mayo that complemented rather than overwhelmed the lobster flavor. Each little lobster nugget on the hot roll was lovingly given its own little bath in butter before placed on the roll. You couldn't ask for two better lobster rolls and to find them in one place is just extraordinary. The fries were also very good - salty and crisp just the way god intended. I have but one complaint on this lobster roll and that's the roll itself. I thought the bread was a little too dense. I prefer my bread to be softer. I suppose the denseness of the roll prevents it from getting soggy, but I think there has to be a better option. Although, that lobster on both rolls is almost enough to make me forgive them for their poor roll choice.

On Friday, I took a little stroll down Newbury and decided to stop into the Sel De la Terre on Boylston for a little lunch. It's always pretty funny to me when a place serves you a bread basket after you order a sandwich, but when I saw the fig bread in the basket I couldn't help but have a piece with some butter. There are no words to describe this soft sweet, rich fig bread. It might just replace raisin toast as my favorite sweet bread. My grilled ham and cheese sandwich was very good (loved the pickled red onions in it) but the star of my plate were the potato chips. I loved whatever spices they threw on these and couldn't stop eating them.

Friday dinner was at Scampo in the Liberty Hotel. First of all, the Liberty Hotel is such fascinating spot. The hotel is a redesigned former prison that provides outstanding people watching (that is tons of people making obvious attempts at being "scensters"). Scampo is italian and is known for its homemade mozzarella bar. As soon as you're seated, they place gigantic bread sticks right on the table and a plate of fava bean puree to dip it in. I happened to be dining with two vegetarians, which can be a bit frustrating on the ordering front because it usually means they're not open to eating any pork. We started with the ciccio handmade bread, which is a round flatbread stuffed with cheese and truffle oil. I'm sorry but there's just no way to go wrong with truffle oil! We obviously had to order something from the mozz bar and decided to be a bit different and order the mozzarella with griddled scarmorza, fried artichokes, and fried zucchini. This was pretty good, but the pieces of cheese were rather small and the fried zucchini and artichoke hijacked the plate (not to complain about deliciously salty fried veggies but I would have liked a little more cheese). For an entree we split a large size serving of the robiola and beet ravioli with poppy seeds and drops of strawberry balsamic and a side order of the crisp griddled potato chive cake with black truffle butter (see note above about the never fail ways of truffle oil). I loved the sauce on the beet ravioli. It was slightly sweet with roasted beets throughout and a fantastic balsamic backdrop. All of which, gives the dish an overall earthy sweet flavor that was downright addictive. It's so rare that you try something that has a very different flavor then anything you've had before, and this was one of those times for me. Overall, I liked the scene at Scampo and the food is delicious enough to warrant many, many return trips.

My final stop in my food filled weekend was at Kanes Donuts in Saugus. I had read about this donut shop and knew my entire family would be more than happy to make a little breakfast trip to end our weekend. The shop is totally old-fashioned, complete with the awesome sign in the photo above. We walked in to this spot full of locals/regulars saying hi to one another, a display with wire baskets full of fresh donuts, and a case of the largest cinnamon buns I've ever seen. So we ordered a marble donut, a jelly donut, and two cinnamon buns.

I'm not entirely sure it's possible to decide which one of the cinnamon buns at Kanes is better - the traditional glazed (left photo) or the cinnamon frosted (right). I personally prefered the cinnamon frosted, but most of my family went back and forth depending on which one they most recently had a bite of. The cinnamon buns were light airy, sweet dough that just melted in your mouth (more of a bread texture than a dense donut). We were quickly defeated and my sister took the rest home for later. She finished them in two days and proclaimed them just as good then as the first day.

The favorite of the two donuts was the jelly, which was certainly among one of the best jelly donuts I've ever had.

And that's the story of how I ate my way around Boston. Until I eat again,

Going to the Chapel - Triple Chocolate Cookies

I love cookies. Just the word "cookie" brings a smile to my face like a giddy little sugar obsessed Augustus Gloop-like kid. Seriously, whenever my family senses that I'm getting grumpy, they immediately find me a cookie...they don't even ask if I want one anymore because the answer is certainly yes. And yes, I'm 30 years old, but that doesn't change how at peace eating a cookie makes me feel. I suppose cookies are my drug of choice. The thing is, I also have this side brownie habit that's tough to shake.

Which brings me to this week's baked good...Triple Chocolate Cookies from an old Bon Appetit. These delectable cookies are the heavenly marriage of my beloved cookie and brownie. In fact, this union resulted in a marriage proposal from one of my co-workers who was fortunate enough to try one. The batter is extremely similar to a brownie batter and prepared in much the same way. The difference is largely that the cookies have far less butter than your average brownie (so I guess they're healthier...or maybe that's just wishful thinking?!). Regardless, the outcome is a moist, fudgy cookie with a thin crispy sugar crust that cracks (no drug reference intended) like a brownie when you bite into it.

The recipe begins with melting 10oz of chocolate...how could it ever go wrong?! Then there's the typical butter sugar creaming, the addition of the eggs, and the addition of the sifted flour, leaveners, and cocoa powder. Then comes the chocolate chips, which I think make these cookies. Next time, I might do a little white chocolate/regular chocolate chip combination to see how one more component in this marriage works out.

My kind of recipe...Starting with melted chocolate

Those crazy kids over at bon appetit suggest scooping a 1/4 cup of batter onto the cookie sheet for each cookie, but even I thought that was a tad on the gluttonous side. Instead, I used my typical 1 tbsp cookie scoop but heaped a little extra batter into it than usual. This resulted in the cookies only needing 12 minutes to cook.

Marriage on a Platter

And people complain that marriage is tough!

Jolly Good/Okay Time at the London - Review of Gordon Ramsay at The London

Celebrity Chefs are an interesting breed...I mean, to me every chef that operates a kitchen that puts out consistently excellent food is a "celebrity" regardless of book deals, tv appearances, etc. A reputation only takes you so far...you have to cook or get the hell out of the kitchen (or hire and train reliable people to cook your recipes and you get out of the kitchen). But, to me the way to judge a chef is whether their restaurant serves good food at a price commensurate with what you get (service, drinks, food, atmosphere, and relaxation time/experience).

Which brings me to the topic of the day - Notoriously Cantankerous Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay (wow...that's a bigger mouthful then a lot of the plates he serves). We've all watched as he berates his chef-testants on Hell's Kitchen. But has this resulted in a well-oiled kitchen? Sue and I set out to answer this question last week at Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel in NYC.

Gordon Ramsay at The London has two options: Maze and the formal dining room. The formal dining room has a nice subdued gray and mother of pearl color theme with interesting light fixtures and a modest number of tables. On unusual feature that I really loved was that the chairs were swivel, which took away the awkward server trying to push your chair in factor (which I personally find rather uncomfortable and unnecessary a lot of the time...here they just lightly turned your chair out and then back into the table). There are two options in the formal dining room - the 3 course or 7 course menu (3 courses will set you back $110 which I view as reasonable for this sort of restaurant). Having a show to attend later that night, we opted for the 3 courses.

The service is good but a tad awkward. Our waiter and food presenters were a bit strange and forced at times, as if they were new and hadn't gotten comfortable yet. At one point, I asked the waiter a question and he explained the dish in such great detail that I think I could make it at home. That said, the intention of the service was good and always there when you needed it. The best part of our service team was undoubtedly the sommelier, because he was quite capable of casual, spontaneous conversation and joking with us. I went over with him what we were going to order and he recommended reasonable bottles that would pair well with each. His strongest recommendation was our choice - a 2008 Brundlmayer Gruner Veltliner that did truly pair well with every bite we had...

We began our meal with a nice glass of prosecco and were then provided with a two part taste from the kitchen. The first was a shot glass of squash and cranberry soup with a brown butter foam, and the second was a spoon with a small bite of seared tuna, ginger, lemongrass and a sprig of cilantro. Sue hated the soup in a shot glass thing..."shots are supposed to be cold and soups are supposed to be eaten with a spoon". While I understand her point of view and also thought that the foam was a bit too thick because the first little taste was all butter, once you got to the remaining portion it was an excellent combination of flavors. The tart cranberry mixed in with the silky sweet squash and the rich brown butter was delightful. The tuna while deliciously fresh was strong with ginger at first and a bit too strong on the cilantro finish.

Our amuse bouche arrived on a plate shaped like a long half cylinder and included a spoonful of roasted garlic and chanterelle mushroom puree and a wee little square of salmon crepe. The salmon crepe was just thinly-sliced, deliciously fresh salmon but rather unremarkable in this day and age of sushi. The roasted garlic and chanterelle mushroom bite on the other hand had such a lovely roasted garlic flavor that mixed nicely with the earthy mushroom background. Something you'd want to spread on bread more than eat by the spoonful but delectable nonetheless.

Following this course, house-salted butter and the bread tray arrived on cue. There were three bread options, but there was no way Susan or I could choose anything but the rosemary, onion, and bacon roll. I wanted this roll to astound me like most bacon items do (I basically wanted this bread to be the cheddar bacon biscuits from Gramercy), but it was just a nice rosemary roll with a salty/smoky bacon flavor seeping its way into some of the bites. Darn.

For my appetizer, I chose the sturgeon with caviar, pickled cucumbers, roasted fennel and pernod truffle sauce. The sturgeon's texture was perfect but it was a bit too charred for me. The charred flavor overwhelmed the plate and allowed no other tastes to come through...I would have loved the salty caviar and the pernod truffle sauce flavors to complement this but the char flavor was a little bit of a plate hog. Upon hearing that I was going to Gordon Ramsay's restaurant, a friend that is a die-hard fan of his show insisted that if risotto or scallops were on the menu I had to order them because Gordon is always yelling about them on his shows and therefore must clearly pay the most attention to these two dishes. Susan tested this theory out by ordering the scallops as her appetizer. And well, if I ever dine in any of his restaurants again, I will without hesitation order any scallop dish I see on the menu. The grilled scallop appetizer was served with a vanilla-infused parsnip cream sauce and oysters. The scallops were fork tender, melting in your mouth with the velvety, vanilla sauce. A delicious appetizer that put me in prime order envy mode.

My choice for entree was the seared salmon with soy & yuzu dust, butter poached lobster (the real reason I ordered the dish), turnip, and hearts of palm. The salmon was like eating a really good piece of sushi complete with soy sauce flavor and it had a nice crisp crust...not an out and out wow but a nice, basic fish preparation. The star of the plate was certainly the butter poached lobster. This was some of the most mouth-wateringly tender bites of heavenly lobster that I've ever had. This butter poached lobster method is just amazing...I've had it twice and I'm hooked. I only wish there were more pieces of buttery lobster on my plate and in my life.

Sue had the Langoustines with pork head terrine made into fritters and a herb pasta. The herb pasta stuck together so much that it reminded me of my college staple, the butter herb pasta-roni, and didn't taste all that different. The langoustines had a very different texture from lobster. There texture was a hybrid of fish and lobster textures that I found kind of addictive (Susan obviously did as well because I was offered far fewer bites then usual). The pork head fritters were richly decadent in a way that only pork can achieve with crisped edges and soft filling.

When I read the dessert options on the menu, I was convinced that there was no way I would like any of them. Luckily, I was completely wrong. My favorite diabetic had the passion fruit and chocolate mousse molded into a rectangular log and garnished with a balsamic reduction and topped with a creme fraiche ice cream. My roasted pear dessert was a round bed of thinly sliced roasted pears with the tiniest sage leaves I've ever seen garnishing them topped with a milk chocolate pudding (they had a fancier name for it but whatever you call it it's a pudding) and vanilla ice cream. The pear and chocolate was a very nice combination. I wouldn't say either of these was the best dessert I've ever had or anywhere close to contending for such honors, but they were very good...Sue and I both finished our plates without a second thought.

Roll in the trolley of treats! The top level was nougatine and salted caramels, the next was a variety of truffles and the bottom was various sugar-based confections like marshmallows and honeycomb.

For the price, I think the food, atmosphere and overall experience is about right. I would have liked to have been amazed by a few more dishes than I was. Each had nice parts, but as a whole didn't always work. I wouldn't say that it has to be on the top of anyone's list of places to dine (I think there are better places in the same price point), but for the midtown location and a special occasion it's a decent option.

I think perhaps you can do a little bit better Gordo

Cheers to some Irish Soda Bread

Okay...so I'm not Irish. But, I love to celebrate a holiday, especially when that holiday has delicious food associated with it. No, that doesn't mean that I buy into the gimicky green beer on St Pat's thing (or at least I haven't since I gracefully exited my 20's). It does mean however that every St Patrick's Day I make corned beef and cabbage and Irish Soda Bread. The problem is that I have a tried and true corned beef recipe, but I'm still in search of the perfect soda bread one. I mean that was until yesterday.


When I was flipping through this years soda bread contenders, I came across the Bread Bible recipe and my jaw dropped open as I read it. She had me at step one in which the raisins are plumped in irish whiskey...GENIUS! How could I not choose this recipe as the one I tested out this year?

The Raisins bathing in Irish Whiskey...don't you want to dive right in there with them?!

I love a baking recipe that comes together in a matter of minutes and involves a bit of kneading, because sometimes you just want/need a super easy week-night baking project thats hands-on. This recipe has a total active time of about 10 minutes and the bread is out of the oven in 30. You mix together the dry ingredients and then crumble the butter into them with your fingers. Stir in the raisins. Then you pour in the buttermilk and stir briefly before turning the dough out onto the counter and kneading it slightly until it comes together. It's important to remember here that dough like this is alot like most people I know. You over-work it and it gets tough and just something you don't want to be anywhere near. So, when you mix it on the counter, just give it a few turns to make sure that most of the flour is incorporated. Mound it into a 6 inch circle and then with a sharp knife cut an "x" in it, as below:

X marks the spot - the dough just before it heads into the oven

Green with envy

This bread is heaven...Slightly sweet with a soft doughy middle and crisp crust. An ideal breakfast anytime of the year, but something special for the St. Pat's holiday. Oh and I loved the raisins in this (this is definitely not going to be the last time I soak raisins in liquor before adding them to a recipe).


This bread toasted with butter...What a Happy St. Patrick's Day indeed! Heres to finding a go-to Irish Soda bread recipe just in time for the holiday. I believe thats what they call the luck of the Irish.

Irish Soda Bread from Bread Bible as printed in St. Petersburg Times

1 cup raisins (I used a little over 4 of the little boxes of sunkist raisins)

1/2 c Irish whiskey

4 tbsp unsalted butter, cold

2 cups all purpose flour

3 tbsp sugar

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

3/4 c + 1 tbsp buttermilk

(1) Combine the raisins and whiskey in a small bowl and cover with plastic wrap and let sit for about 30 minutes (you can let them sit for longer if you want but I found 30 minutes to be plenty for the raisins to get plumped)

(2) Drain the raisins...the recipe in the Times suggests making a whiskey butter which I didn't do b/c I was going to have this for breakfast at work and didn't think it was a good idea! Well I thought it was a good idea but probably not a very productive one.

(3) Preheat the oven to 375

(4) Cut the butter in 8 slices

(5) Stir together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Mix in the butter with your fingertips until its coarse crumbs (like a pie crust). Stir in the drained raisins. Stir in the buttermilk just until it comes together.

(6) Pour the dough onto the counter and knead together gently to incorporate the flour into the dough. Remember what I said - don't overwork the dough. Gently push it together about 6-8 times.

(7) Shape the dough into a 6-inch round. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silpat. Make an 'X' with a sharp knife across the top of the dough.

(8) Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool for about 30-40 minutes. Rose recommends that the bread be cooled on a wire rack wrapped in a clean cotton kitchen towel.

(9) Slice, spread with butter, enjoy!