Food for Thought: Chruscikis

The March/April issue of Style is out!

Go here for my experiences making chrusciki for the first time (there's a recipe, too).

This month's "Past Perfect" profiles the history of Old Saint Paul's.

Enjoy!

Free Range: Salt and Alchemy on 36th

Friends, I gushed. Go here for the review of Salt.

An evening at Alchemy on 36th was less overwhelming.

When life gives you lemons...

make lemon meringue pie!

Happy Valentine's Day, Mom. Only six more weeks until you'll be walking down steps, shopping for your own lemons, and making your own pies.

Pinkish

Ballet slipper or rose petal?

Honestly, friends, I'm more partial to a box of chocolates than any other sweet on Valentine's Day. How about you?

Whatever your preference, may your weekend be filled with sweet pleasures.

Free Range: Havana Road Cuban Cafe

Best. Cubano. In. Town.

'Nuff said.

Go here for the full review.

Icing? Frosting?

Icing or frosting? Is there a difference? I usually use the former as the noun and the latter as the verb, but I could be wrong.

Friends, I’m back from an unscheduled hiatus with a quote of a day from Baker’s [the chocolate company] Favorite Chocolate Recipes: A Handbook of Chocolate Cookery, 1952:

Frosting your cake is an art. Some people are more gifted than others, but everyone can turn out a cake that is good to look at.

Words to live by? Possibly not.

I’ve been making lots of cupcakes lately, not out of any nod to foodie fashion, but for the simple reason that they’re easier to share with many people than is a single cake.

These coconut cupcakes were made using Ina Garten’s recipe. Out of cream cheese (I used the last bit in the icing last week’s batch of chocolate cupcakes [Kathleen's Devil's Food Cake from The New Basics]), I turned to the Baker’s cookbook for a chocolate version of seven minute frosting, but really, the white version was so pretty, I decided to keep most of them snowy rather than muddy.

Here’s me trying to photograph a la Jane Brocket with a digital camera and a not-vintage-but-embroidered tablecloth (I’m relieved that Brocket, too, neglects to press her linens before shooting...).

More cupcakes are on the horizon this weekend. My friend Pat, subject of January’s Food for Thought, called yesterday to ask if I would contribute a dozen (which quickly became two dozen) to a cupcake drive she’s organizing for My Sister’s Place, and how can you say no to that? Pat suggested cupcakes that would be Valentine’s Day appropriate, like red velvet, but I’ve never found a red velvet cake I liked. I’m counting on careful hand and red food coloring to make a white icing ballet slipper pink. Barring that, there’s always chocolate.

Dinner, Maryland-style

As I recounted here, at the end of August, I hosted a Maryland-themed dinner for my Style colleagues, a few friends, and family. Lead times being as they are, the piece ran this month in the November issue.

My mother and I made crabcakes and fried chicken, peach cake and Smith Island Cake, and from the above cookbook, recipes from former Maryland First Lady, Mrs. Helen Avalynne Tawes, sweet potato rolls (and not biscuits, as one of the photo captions reads; that's the risen dough, below).

A labor of love, for sure, but next time, I'm trying the Maryland stuffed ham.

Go here for the story.

Free Range: Chef Mac's Louisiana Cuisine

Lauraville storefront = a little bit of Louisiana.

Go here for the review and there for the gumbo.

Free Range: The Dizz Grandview

Same as it ever was--albeit this time at the top of a Hampden apartment building. Go here for the review.

And yes, dear readers, there really is a Mrs. Woolwine...

Feeding My Head

Although the calendar may say otherwise, October is truly the shortest (and definitely the most beautiful) month.

So here we are in November. I'm just back from the Bedell Nofiction Now conference at the University of Iowa, re-charged and ready to jump back in the fray...tomorrow.

But remember these?

Here's how the story turned out.

Cooler...

The weather, that is. Finally.

And this means changes are afoot in the kitchen. A pork loin ringed with carrots and potatoes went into the oven, rather than on the grill, on Sunday, the first roast of the season. Soon it will be nippy enough for beef stew.

This morning, however, it's New York Times' writer, Melissa Clark's granola in the oven, filling the house with the cinnamon tempered by the clean smell of olive oil. I'm smitten with this recipe, even though I usually substitute more cinnamon for the cardamom and occasionally add sunflower seeds(today I had to substitute almonds for pistachios because I was out--drat). The olive oil keeps it crunchy and light, and I'm totally sold on the maple syrup, a slightly more expensive option than honey, but I like the subtle smokiness it imparts. Clark serves the granola with fresh ricotta, which sounds heavenly, but I'm more likely to have Greek yogurt in the fridge and that works well too, tart meeting sweet and salty, creamy contrasting with crunch.

All summer I've been waiting to scratch my baking itch, but it's just been too...damn...hot. While I don't need snow...yet...I'm more than ready for autumn. Hello Fall!

Old Wine

Saturday was not meant to be a feast, and yet a bottle of wine and a lot of exhaustion made it so.

I spent most of the day re-painting the backyard fence and bolted late in the afternoon to do some quick grocery shopping. But I was too lazy to buy wine, thinking we must have something at home to drink. We did, but most of it was wine bought during a former life, meant to be saved for a special dinner, not burgers and chips. But I did find this:


a bottle of 1997 Domaine Maume Gevrey-Chambertin.

I and some former colleagues at The Wine Source each bought a half case or so of this wine six or seven years ago when the distributor was trying to get rid of it at a rock bottom price. Some bottles were surprisingly good then, some were already well past their prime, and the last few bottles I had, I'd had to dump. This one bottle lingered, and out of desperation, I opened it, expecting nothing.

But it was lovely, a little faded, but soft and supple with just a shadow of cherry and a little rose petal. This was not a profound wine experience, one that changes your perceptions of red burgundy, Pinot Noir, life. Rather, this was a gentler experience, like the touch of a hand on sore muscles or the reminder of the potential grace in age.

Cheers.

C'est si beau

K made dinner tonight.

Salade Niçoise.

'Nuff said.

Feeling Fishy

September has brought with it the bustle of preparing for our annual long weekend at the beach (which can run anywhere from three to six days) and the catching up that comes after. And so apologies for absence.

This year's respite was mercifully rain free. It was also free of photos, but full of good eating. We made our annual stop at Beach to Bay Seafood in Princess Anne to visit with Rich and Diane Evanusa and eat their fresher-than-fresh seafood. K had a whopper of a soft crab sandwich, two fat crabs balanced between white bread with tomato and lettuce, as well as Diane's homemade cole slaw and mustardy potato salad. I inhaled my own version of a fried seafood combo platter: several gorgeous fried oysters that must have been at least three inches in diameter, a sweet grouper fillet, fries (natch), and Diane's homemade stewed tomatoes, which were excellent, though I still prefer the pickled beets, sadly unavailable that day. Their rice pudding is also to die for.

From there we drove north to Delmar, Delaware to the not quite one year old Evolution Craft Brewing Company. Wednesday through Sunday $5 gets you five generous samples of their brews from the inevitable seasonal pumpkin beer, Jaques Au Lantern, made Belgian-style, to the coffee-spiked Rise Up Stout. (The Exile ESB is my favorite.)

It turned out to be a fish-filled weekend (and why shouldn't it when you're at the beach?). Twice we drove north to Rehoboth to eat at Salt Air Kitchen for fish stew and halibut over lentils (Thursday) and baked bluefish and corvino (Friday), never mind the white anchovy "pizzas" and chorizo and date skewers. Saturday I made fish tacos with fresh tuna, and Sunday we hit Rehoboth yet again, this time for Chinese at Shawn Xiong's excellent Confucius where we carried out salt and pepper shrimp, cumin beef, fiery hot pepper pork, and searing sauteed string beans--a feast made complete with a bottle of rose.

In between eating I walked the beach, watched the U.S. Open and far too many HGTV shows in a cable tv gorge akin to pounding junk food, did a little sewing, read Peter Robinson's latest Inspector Banks mystery, counted the brown pelicans, saw one dolphin and one oystercatcher, the latter picking its way across the beach at breakfast time. It was a pleasure to be away from home.

And it is a pleasure to be back.

Friday

For anyone who ever wonders if the family stories in my articles are true, the answer is, for better or for worse, yes.

Take this piece about how I usually spend my Friday nights making pizza and listening to music. This is so routine, it has become ritual, and a good one at that.

So tonight, I will put yeast and flour and olive oil into the food processor, chop up garlic, open a can of chopped clams, and put it all together for a pizza to nosh on while listening to the first Night Shift show of the season on 90.5 FM WKHS Worton. Welcome back to the airwaves, MartyQ!

Lunch on Wheels

Several years ago, I woke up in Madison, Wisconsin the morning after a Hold Steady concert, and headed downtown for a cup of coffee only to find that every corner of the capital square was occupied by a lunch truck. There was a truck dedicated to sushi, another for Indian food, and still another for Mexican. I sipped and stared and kicked myself for having eaten a crummy waffle earlier at the La Quinta. This fleet of food trucks was nothing short of magnificent.

Baltimore is slowly joning the ranks of cities with food trucks, a phenomenon I explore here in September's issue of Urbanite. The trucks hit the suburbs as well as the city, and so far places like Tide Point, Hunt Valley, and the Rotunda have become regular stops. And if you're interested in starting your own lunch truck, Brian Sacks, owner of the license for Juana Burrito, offers consultation at www.mobilfoodprofits.com. Roll on.

Free Range: Vino Rosina

This week's Free Range review is Vino Rosina, one of Harbor East's newest establishments, and current home to former Top Chef contestant, Jesse Sandlin. On the night we visited, Sandlin's food was inventive, well executed, and on the whole, quite nice, but it was the eclectic, very smart winelist and tremendous service that gave the whole experience that extra special je ne sais quoi.

Just ask for Bassel, and tell him I sent you.

My Maryland

The end of last week was a cooking whirlwind beginning on Thursday and ending on Sunday evening when I hosted a Maryland-themed dinner for Style colleagues and a few friends and family members. This was no easy task (though it was made easier by the fact that I decided to tackle making Maryland Stuffed Ham another day).

The menu included sweet potato yeast rolls and chow chow, recipes care of Mrs. Helen Avalynne Tawes, former First Lady of Maryland; Maryland Fried Chicken, recipe courtesy of John Shields, who was also a guest and brought beaten biscuits; and crabcake courtesy of my mother. Joe Sugarman made one hell of a turtle soup, and I tackled Mrs. Frances Kitchings' recipe for Smith Island Cake, the official state dessert (shouldn't that be sno-balls? But I digress.).


Smith Island Cake can have up to twelve thin as a pancake layers and as few as eight (which is what my rendering yielded). These days it's also made up in a myriad of flavors, but I stuck to the original yellow cake with chocolate icing. It's not half bad. Actually, it's pretty good, but only if you like icing. I do.


Stay tuned for a report of the whole dinner (plus photos!)in the November issue of Style.

What is your favorite Maryland dish?

We Be Jamun!

I love sweets of all stripes, but a cold case full of Indian desserts always poses a slew of questions. Why is it pink or seafoam green? Does everything have coconut in it? (No) Can something called barfi actually taste good? (Yes)

In this month's Style I learn how to make gulab jamun, little dough balls made with powdered milk, fried, and dipped in sugar syrup. They are my favorite Indian dessert, and I've been eating my parents' neighbor Veena's version for years, since she brought them to our house when I was a child.

Veena's husband, Rustum, venerates Bob Marley ("That's all he'll listen to in the car," sighs Veena), and so I feel compelled to use as the title of this post the phrase I sing over and over when I'm lucky enough to get a Tupperware bowl of these treats (with apologies to all Rastas).

Go here for the full story.

"A Signature Store"

It's no secret Baltimoreans love their old department stores, and though Stewart's often doesn't rouse as much nostalgia as Hutzler's or even Hochschild Kohn, as Brian Lawrence points out in his Editor's Letter in the current issue of Style, people who loved Stewart's really loved it. My article about the venerable Baltimore department store can be found here.

Writing about Stewart's was a labor of love, in part due to the voluminous response I received from a query posted to a Facebook group dedicated to the memory of Reisterstown Road Plaza. To those folks and the many people who shared stories and memories of shopping at Stewart's, my deepest thanks, and apologies to folks I with whom I wasn't able to connect based on deadlines and time restrictions.