Go Places & Eat Things

Kitchen reno? Make it work!

Some days, the one thing better than going places and eating things is staying home and cooking a favorite meal or experimenting with a new recipe. This feeling always seems to hit me in the first crisp days of late summer and early autumn, and this year is no exception. But even though I've cooked in kitchens large and small, old and new over the years, the kitchen I have now just isn't working for me. So it looks like we're in for a season of go places and eat things - and remembering kitchens and meals past - as we plan for a renovation that we hope to complete by the end of the year.

In our first apartment, the eat-in kitchen was small, with very little counter space, small stove and no dishwasher. Yet I remember cooking some pretty elaborate dishes in it. I was particularly proud of a chocolate dacquoise I made for a special occasion. Back then I carefully recorded special meals and menus in a little book - who was invited, where they sat, what we drank and ate. Oh, the stories it has to tell. I know I saw it when we packed up the last house. At this point, it will have to stay in its box until the kitchen is complete. Maybe I was spoiled by the kitchen in our last home. It was new and well-planned and everything worked. It had a ginormous work island. Hhhnnnhhh.

Oh, well. I am in another kitchen now and we have a lot of decisions to make to make it work. The kitchen reno is the first major project in this house and we want it to set the tone for the rest of the decorating we have to do. No pressure, right? This weekend, we looked at lighting. Lamp for the dining area? Check. Pendants for over the peninsula? Check. Recessed lighting for the prep and cleanup areas? But wait, lightbulbs? Is there a right answer there?

We visited friends today to see their recent kitchen makeover. They have an old farmhouse and their choices for everything from flooring to faucets, cooktop to cabinets are just perfect. They love to cook and their decisions improved the space while preserving the farmhouse feel. We listened to their stories about delayed deliveries and dealing with the off-kilter quirks of an older home. They told us about their splurges and their steals. I saw how carefully they had considered a place for everything, and could see how getting everything in its place is well worth the time and careful planning.

So, do I give up a little counter space for a second sink? Get the fancy recycling center cabinet feature? A pot-filler faucet near the range? Tile backsplash? A special place for my favorite cook books? Where did I put that lighting catalog?

Please share your favorite kitchen renovation stories. I need all the help I can get!

 

Cookies on the Menu!

So, I've been a fan of cookies on the menu for some time now. I first took notice of just how perfect dessert cookies were after lunch years ago at Michael's on 55th St. in Manhattan. They served a plate of bite-sized cookies that satisfied just about every little sweet craving. I hope it's still on the menu there.

After my first visit to Michael's, I started paying attention to dessert menus, looking for a plate of cookies. It is not as widespread an item as I'd like it to be. I was excited to find a cookie plate in a newly opened restaurant in my home town, but it went away pretty quickly and I was told it was difficult to estimate the demand in order to have fresh cookies to serve every day. I'm sure there's something to that. I'd like to understand the work and planning that go into getting a cookie plate on the menu.

I pulled some cookie photos to share.

A lovely little shortbread cookie with lemon cream filling.

Cookies with caramel and their perfect partner, a cup of coffee.

A little plate of biscotti at Zuni Cafe, San Francisco.

Cookies beautifully presented at a vegan place in San Francisco.

So, what are your favorite restaurants with cookies on the menu? When was the last time you put out a plate of cookies for dessert? What is your favorite cookie?

 

 

Three Dessert Night

After our second move in six months – from house to new state and temporary condo to new house – things are finally getting back to normal. Sort of. Well, of course there will be some kitchen reno, but more about that later. So, feeling a little more settled than we have in recent months, we ventured out this weekend for a little celebration dinner.

Our destination: Lee, Mass., with a late reservation at Chez Nous, where a husband and wife team serve French bistro food and delightful desserts. On the last Saturday of the summer season, we arrived onto a vibrant scene filled with the frenzied vibe that says “Enjoy it while you can!”

After a brief stop at the bar, we were shown to our table in a cozy room with a fireplace that I can imagine lighted and warmly glowing on a snowy night sometime in the too-near future.

With hot-from-the-oven bread before us, we considered the menu, and decided to try the appetizer special Jonah crab cakes with sauce chien – described as an Antilles-style salsa – and a smoky tomato and goat cheese timbale that featured Monterey goat cheese surrounded by seared and marinated tomato “petals” with greens and balsamic. Both were good, but the timbale was our favorite, with its beautifully contrasting textures and flavors.

You can hardly go wrong at a bistro with the steak-frites. At Chez Nous it is served with espelette pepper and herb infused EVOO. We also ordered the grilled organic salmon with coconut nage and 5-grain organic pilaf. All good, but the best was yet to come. And we ordered three of them!

That’s right. We ordered three desserts. It’s my fault. I couldn’t resist! Pastry chef Rachel Portnoy was trying out a chocolate and hazelnut tart for fall and, if it were up to us, it would make it onto the year-round menu. Creamy, luscious and sweet, it will surely develop a devoted following.

 

I had never had lemon-lavender posset, in fact had never heard of a posset, so I ordered one of those, too, and it was crazy good. It’s an “old-fashioned English dessert: creamy eggless lemon custard infused with lavender” and served with a red berry compote and two exquisitely tiny and perfect almond-raspberry macaroons. The tart lemon-lavender custard reignited my taste buds after the first two courses. You can find a lot of recipes out there for lemon posset. The Chez Nous version was served in a tiny canning jar – adorable. The macaroons were a preview of the goodness that still to come in our third (!) dessert, the Chez Nous cookie plate.

I may have mentioned it before, but I am a BIG fan of cookies on the dessert menu. After a satisfying meal I am not often looking for a big, gooey dessert, just a little something soft and chewy or crisp and nutty to go with my after-dinner coffee. Importantly, you can get maybe three tastes/textures on a properly composed cookie plate, whereas with another dessert, you get an often overly large portion of just one thing.

Cookies rule, and the standout on the Chez Nous plate was the sable, possibly a labor of love for Portnoy, who said it comes from the same region of France that her husband calls home. Here’s a link to a great piece from the New York Times about the cookie plus a recipe from Dorie Greenspan. The sable was wonderful and the rest of the cookies on the plate, at least the ones I tasted (the hubby might have beaten me to one or two), were all just perfect.

And speaking of after dinner cookies, I’ve been talking about launching a “Campaign for Cookies on the Menu,” for a while now. This seems like a good time to do it. Watch for an upcoming post, and tell me about your favorite restaurants with cookies on the menu.

In Which We Save the Birthday From the Rainy Day

A rainy day dampened our enthusiasm for a drive to the ocean yesterday, but it was the hubby's birthday so I resisted the urge to go back to bed, and considered our options. Antiques shopping in quaint small towns is not really his thing, but a nice meal out is something we both enjoy. The answer: lunch at Gramercy Bistro and a wander through MASS MoCA, which share a campus in North Adams, Mass.

Despite nearly constant precipitation, our ride through the Berkshires wrapped us in watery splendor - the hills reduced to overlapping shades of gray-green, lush, and sanctified to a higher purpose by fingers of cloud reaching down from the sky. It goes without saying that iPhone photos don't begin to do justice to the scene before us. For a couple of recent transplants from the flat though equally blessed corn and soybean fields of the Midwest, it was breathtaking.

The peaceful quiet of the as yet unfilled dining room at Gramercy Bistro suited our lingering awe of the natural beauty of the drive, but it didn't last, and it was nice to see the space fill with a diverse crowd.

We took our time with the menu. I considered the soup du jour, which was leek and potato, but selected the smoked trout pâté - a spread, really - served with crostini, tarragon sauce, mustard and cornichons. I am a somewhat late arrival to the smoked trout fan club, but I'd like to be its president. My brother has a smoker and has tried all kinds of fish, meats and cheese and I am his grateful convert. The delicate smokey flavor of the trout in the pâté held its own with the other spread ingredients and the well-suited accompaniments. I enjoyed it with a glass of Domaine du Tariquet chardonnay from France.

The birthday boy had the shrimp and pork spring rolls served with a sweet and spicy chili sauce that he declared "tasty" with just the right amount of tang and heat and a nice crunch to the roll. I agree. The flavors were nicely balanced and the heat was pleasant. He selected a cabernet sauvignon and seemed happy with the pairing.

The cab was especially nice with his steak frites, a slightly over done grilled marinated flank steak and quite satisfying - I know because I had one several - hand cut fries.

I chose the lobster mac and cheese over the goat cheese quiche and briefly regretted my decision because the quiche came with roasted carrot and fennel and dressed greens, and the mac and cheese came with, well, lobster. I always feel a little bad when my entrée does not include a side of veg. But I soldiered through most it before I threw in the towel and declared myself stuffed. I recovered nicely when the server brought the dessert menu.

The chocolate hazelnut dacquoise cake with candied hazelnuts did not come with a flaming candle, but it was consumed until there was nothing left but plate. I have made dacquoise - lovely nutty meringue - and really should dust off the recipe I used many years ago. The Gramercy Bistro dessert by pastry chef Lindsay Bleau featured the dacquoise in a little crunchy/melt-in-the-mouth Stonehenge around a satisfying chocolate and hazelnut cake. Much to his credit, the celebrant did not once utter the word Nutella.

I didn't need a doggie bag for my dessert either. The fleur de sel caramel tart comprised a lot of lovely caramel and salt on a wafer thin chocolate cookie crust.  The little spoon decoration was of the same cookie dough.

We walked off our decadent lunch at MASS MoCA next door, spending quite a bit of time in the mind-boggling Sol Lewitt "A Wall Drawing Restrospective." It was as inspiring an exhibit as the scenery on our drive to the museum.

 

iPad induced memories of a centuries-old city

I was checking out the offerings served up this morning on my Zite Personalized Magazine app for the iPad  and found this lovely article about Bologna, Italy in the New York Times. It had me pushing aside a few years worth of mental clutter to uncover the Wayback Machine. In I hopped and soon I was transported back a few years and several centuries, ambling along covered walkways, making my way to Piazza Maggiore, where I sat, sipping wine in the spreading shade of a springtime afternoon. There are photos, somewhere, in a box that is in storage at the moment. But I don't need photos to recall the feeling of time slowed, even in the ebb and flow of strolling pedestrians on a major shopping avenue. And somewhere nearby, a church where a companion and I lit candles and sent good thoughts into the universe. The richness of flavors tasted for the first time in a little restaurant - known to some Italian friends, where we ate what the proprietor had prepared - are still on my tongue, though the name of the restaurant is not.

Interesting that these memories of centuries old Bologna were brought to life again by a very modern device. Bologna is one of the many places I experienced while traveling on business, to which I'd like to return with a very different agenda, or no agenda at all.

Dinner on the Porch, and a Cookie

I know I said I was going to tell you about vegan restaurants in Munich, but that will have to wait a little longer. Tonight hubby and I enjoyed a delicious meal on the covered porch at Alta Restaurant and Wine Bar in Lenox, Mass., and I just had to tell you about it.

This was not our first visit to Alta. We have been for lunch and were pleased with the food and the experience. On my first visit I had a sandwich called The Autumn, which consisted of house roasted turkey, grilled butternut squash, caramelized onion, cheddar cheese, and cranberry sauce. Oh, it was good! I've been back since and enjoyed a number of items but tonight was especially good. The fading light and mild temperature made their contributions to a pleasant evening, but the food was very much to our liking.

We shared an appetizer, Local Goat Cheese Roll, comprising unspecified local goat cheese and dates in a fried egg roll-type wrapper. Creamy and sweet and crunchy. A great start!

For the entree, I had caramelized diver scallops served with pineapple quinoa, Equinox spinach, coconut milk & fresh lime, and I took their suggestion of the Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc 2009, from New Zealand. The citrus and light fruit flavors suggested a tropical setting. A perfect meal for a summer evening. The hubby likes to have a steak when we go out, so he had the pan seared NY strip steak, fingerling potatoes, tomate provencale, with fig veal demi-glace. Eschewing the recommended Russian River Cabernet Sauvignon, he chose instead a 2007 E. Guigal Cotes Du Rhone. He didn't say much while he ate, so I know he enjoyed it.

Winters can be long and cold both where we come from and where we now find ourselves living, so the first outdoor meal of the season is a real treasure, whether at home or on the porch of a lovely restaurant. The long sunset casts a glow that puts surroundings in a special light and memories can be particularly sweet.

In this case, the dessert was especially sweet, because Alta has a cookie on the menu! I think cookies should be on more menus, and I'll cover that in a future post, but suffice to say that the fresh, warm, chocolate chip cookie I enjoyed tonight at Alta was the perfect ending to a lovely light meal.

May it go your way!

Connecting with a city and its people takes a little extra effort when traveling on business, but the rewards can be rich. My trip last week to Munich is a case in point, with days spent at a trade fair and my evenings free. But as long as I could find the energy, I was willing to go places and eat things.

My colleagues and I arrived in Munich mid-morning on Sunday and as soon as we had checked into our hotel and eaten a little lunch to boost our energy levels, we were climbing aboard Munich's fantastic public transit system, headed for the heart of the city: Marienplatz.

I don't remember exactly how or when I first heard about the Rathaus-Glockenspiel there, but it is something I have wanted to see for a long time. It was exciting to come up out of the subway on Marienplatz and see it right in front of me, so you can imagine how much fun it was to see it in action at 5 p.m. that day. The carillon is part of the new town hall construction that was completed in 1909.

The square is surrounded by shops and restaurants, but the Ratskeller called, so we went inside for a beer. Jet-lagged as I was, I can't tell you what kind of beer I had to drink, but I do remember ordering a little treat called Obazda, which is described on the menu as bavarian camembert and cream cheese spread with weizenbeer, paprika and onions. It was exactly what I was craving at that moment, and it went really well with the beer. I have since seen it described as a Bavarian beer garden classic (also spelled Obatzda). Here's what it looked like:

What's not to like, right? One beer and a plate of obazda and it was time to find our way back to the hotel. But we returned the next night and discovered the vegan side of Munich. Prosit!

Afternoon Delight

After a quiet burger lunch today at The Lantern Bar and Grill, hubby and I did a little window shopping on North Street in Pittsfield, Mass., stopping to check out all the lovely things at the Museum Facsimiles Outlet Store.

After getting our fill of posters, cards and other delights, we resumed our walk and, crossing to the next corner, caught sight of the lovely sign outside Mary's Carrot Cake. We were drawn like moths to a flame. Who doesn't want a little something sweet after a meal? Oh, I know they're out there, but c'mon!

The three customers already inside, chatting with proprietor Mary McGinnis, filled the place - it doesn't take much to fill this adorable pantry-sized shop - but I was able to make my way to the cake case. What a lovely little jewel box it was, filled with two-bite carrot cakes and some slightly larger cupcakes including ones with chocolate cake, chocolate icing and a chunk of chocolate on top. Hmmm, which to choose?

Mary boxed up our little dessert and we headed home, where I put on a fresh pot of coffee and plated our cupcakes. Hubby commented on the "perfect cake to frosting ratio" and saved his chocolate chunk for last, while I ate the chocolate chunk right off the top and savored every bite of cupcake with a little of the rich frosting. No matter how you approach it, a small cupcake makes a perfectly satisfying sweet.

Was it a faux pas to choose the chocolate cupcake over the carrot cake on my first visit? Possibly. And I promise to go back soon and choose something with carrots in it. So, for now, I'm just going to sit here and finish my coffee and remember every chocolatey bite.

Post Lost and Found

Here's a post I wrote at the beginning of the year that got lost on my desktop. Time for a little cleanup there, I guess.

Happy as a clam?

We went with friends to a local seafood restaurant for dinner on New Year’s Eve. As I studied the menu, which included lobster and oysters and New England clam chowder, it struck me that I don’t know beans about fish and seafood.

Growing up in Illinois, the fish we ate most often was breaded cod in stick form and tuna from a can. As an adult, I ordered shrimp and calamari and crab in local restaurants and generally enjoyed the flavors but, with no frame of reference, I often wondered what I really knew about how they should or could taste and how much better such a meal would have been several hundred miles closer to the source, fresh from the icy sea.

One of my favorite food memories is of an order of scallops I enjoyed in a restaurant in Aix-en-Provence.  I almost didn’t order them, however, because of a bad experience with some frozen scallops my mother served one Christmas Eve when I was young.  Once, in Nice, I watched two friends devour a tower of frutti de mare and wondered if I could ever eat those things, let alone with such obvious enjoyment.

Well, I’m going to set a challenge for myself. We’re moving soon to New England, and I plan to devote considerable time and energy to creating a new frame of reference for the enjoyment of seafood. On a recent trip to my future home, I went to my first clambake. As people all around me consumed bags full of the things, I tried one.  Clearly I’ll need to taste a lot more clams before I can fully appreciate their flavorful charms – but I’m game!

I’m looking forward to this relocation for a number of reasons. After living in the same suburban area for all but the first two years of my life, I think it’s time for a change. I anticipate that moving several hundreds miles away from home will bring about a new awareness and appreciation of my surroundings and day-to-day activities. Everything will be new.

You know how you say aloud sometimes “I’ve been driving this same route so often my car knows the way,” or words to that effect? I’m ready to shake free from that feeling that I’ve done all this before.

I’m looking forward to trying all kinds of new foods, and familiar foods in new ways, and creating some new food memories. New England, here I come.

No Hildene, but still...

So, after many months of stress and planning, we have successfully moved ourselves and our belongings from Illinois to New England. With our stuff in storage until we find a house, we are free to explore this part of the U.S. where, frankly, we have not spent much time apart from a couple of trips to Boston more than a decade ago.

We awoke this morning to a bright, sunny day and the promise of mild temperatures, so after a quick search of things to do in the area, we set off on a drive toward Bennington, Vermont, with a visit to Hildene, a Lincoln family estate, as a possible destination. What could be more perfect than two former Illinoisans on a pilgrimage of sorts, to a place Honest Abe's progeny called home?

Well, long story very short, we never found Hildene, though not for lack of trying. Let's leave it at that and call it a nice ride through some very beautiful countryside. Oh, but we did make a stop for lunch at Chauncey's in Arlington, Vermont. It's a friendly, welcoming little restaurant with a simple menu that was right where we wanted it to be when we were ready to take a break. And the French toast was pretty good, too.

We'll put a little more thought into our next trip, and you can bet we'll have the GPS with us when we go. But I don't know that we'll enjoy it any more than we did our drive to Bennington and beyond, and lunch at Chauncey's.