Weekend Roadtrip to LA

I recently went on a roadtrip to LA with some friends and got to see family, friends and try some new restaurants.  The first restaurant we ate at was Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles in Hollywood.  I've heard a lot of people talk about this place and how good it was but I'd never tried it.  I can now say I've eaten there and the waffles are tasty!

Here's a picture of my waffle plate (the "Natalie's Special" is just two waffles, I was scared to try the chicken):

People who know me well know that I don't usually eat a lot but I finished my entire plate!  The waffles have a slight cinnamon taste and are light and fluffy, which is unusual for a waffle.  I washed my Natalie Special down with one of Roscoe's specialty drinks, the Sunset.  It's a combination of fresh squeezed lemonade and fruit punch.  Here's a picture:

Needless to say, I'm now a Roscoe's fan and will plan to visit next time I'm in southern California.

I also got a chance to visit Santa Monica and ate brunch at a great cafe, which was recommended to me, called The Rose Cafe & Market.  I ordered the veggie quiche:

The quiche had asparagus, leek, oven-dried tomato & fontina cheese and was served with an arugula salad.  I love quiche and this one was very good - I think I might try and re-create it at home when I feel like taking on a cooking project.  I'd definitely recommend the Rose Cafe to anyone looking for a good place to eat in Santa Monica.  They also had a bakery with some amazing-looking desserts, next time I'll try one of those.

All in all it was a great weekend - great weather, great food, great family, and great friends.

Wagyu beef

While watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel, I learned something new about Kobe beef.  I always thought that Kobe beef was a breed of cattle named after the region in Japan where they're raised and get their muscles massaged and sake added to their diet to improve the taste.  Turns out that information is only partly correct - Kobe beef actually comes from several breeds of wagyu cattle who are raised not only in Kobe but also in various parts of Australia and New Zealand (and in a hybrid form, the US).  For more information than you probably care to know, here's the wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagyu_beef.

I must admit that I've never had the pleasure of eating kobe beef in it's steak format (as it was probably intended to be eaten), instead I had it once in a trendy restaurant in the form of sliders (tiny hamburgers that seem to be all the rage now).  Needless to say, the amount of Kobe/wagyu beef I got was minimal and so I don't feel like I really got to experience the full benefit of it.  It is on my list of things to try eventually only now I know that I can also look for wagyu on the menu.

Mijita Cocina Mexicana

This past weekend I went into San Francisco to see a friend from Chicago who was in town visiting.  We wanted to meet up for lunch and I wanted to take him somewhere that was unique to San Francisco, which ended up being the Ferry Building (aptly named since people commute to/from San Francisco by ferry and this is the terminal where the ferry's come/go).  One of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco is at the Ferry Building and is called The Slanted Door, which serves amazingly fresh, clean Vietnamese food.  When I'm at the Ferry Building I usually opt for Slanted Door takeout but thought that since I had a guest, we'd try something new. After walking around the amazing outdoor farmer's market for awhile, we'd worked up an appetite and were ready to eat.  We landed at Mijita which has a small menu with tacos, enchiladas and various side dishes.  I ordered a carnitas (pork) taco with a side of guacamole and chips.

The carnitas taco came topped with a spicy, tangy salsa verde and the pork was fall-off-the-bone tender.  It was a little tough to eat but tasty.  The guacamole was fresh and the chips were homemade, fried-to-order.  All in all, I would say that it was a good meal but a tad overpriced for the portion size.  Guess I'm just not used to city prices.

Chocolate Raspberry Bars with White Chocolate and Almonds

People who know me well know that I'm a terrible baker.  Even though I'm a fairly logical person and you'd think that the exactness of baking would be a perfect fit for me, I continue to struggle with anything that requires turning on an oven and mixing wet and dry ingredients.  Needless to say, when I do find a baking recipe that I can actually manage, I embrace it and hold on for life.  This past weekend I was invited to a friend's house for lunch after church so I volunteered to bring dessert.  I knew that I had to make something good since she's also a foodie and likes to cook and so I decided on Giada De Laurentiis' Chocolate Raspberry Bars with White Chocolate and Almonds (a recipe that involves baking but one that I can actually make).  The name sounds fancier than it really is because it's basically just brownie mix with some sort of fruit jam layered into the brownie batter that's then cooked and drizzled with white chocolate and almond slivers on the top.  Still, I've made the recipe a couple of times before and it never fails to impress so I knew it was the perfect thing to bring.

Here's a picture of the brownie batter with the layered fruit jam (in this case, grape jam):

 

I basically just mixed the brownie batter according to the recipe and then poured the jam in lines after it had cooled.  I then ran a knife through the lines from left to right to create the pattern.

Here's what the brownies look like after they're baked:

 

It's kind of cool how the jam leaves deep pockets in the brownie mix as it cooks but doesn't sink to the bottom.

Here's the homemade double broiler I made to melt the white chocolate for the top:

 

I learned the hard way when I first attempted this recipe that white chocolate chips have a lot more milk solids in them than regular milk chocolate chips so you really have to use low heat and stir it a lot to get it to melt properly.  The first time I tried melting white chocolate the heat was too high and I didn't stir often enough and it turned into a hard mess of unmeltable goo.  Needless to say, I got it right this time because here's a picture of the final product:

I took the brownies to lunch and people enjoyed them.  Now that I've mastered that recipe, I've decided to try something a little harder - Giada's Peanut Butter Cookies with Blackberry Jam recipe.  Stay tuned for an update on how it goes, maybe I'll become a baker after all...

Petit Basque Cheese

As I've mentioned before, I love all kinds of cheese (even the "cheese" that comes wrapped in individual squares of cellophane and has all those warnings on the package that it is, in fact, edible).  One of my favorites is called Petit Basque (aka Tomette D'Helette) and I was first introduced to it by my grandfather at Christmas several years ago.  I always keep an eye out for it and was pleasantly surprised when i visited Cowgirl Creamery at the Ferry Building in San Francisco and found that they had it.  I was even more excited as the woman explained to me that their Petit Basque was unique in that their cheesemaker adds a little bit of chili powder in the rind as it's aging, which gives it a little kick of flavor.  Once I learned this, I had to have a chunk to take home and try.  Needless to say, it was love at first bite and I finished off the entire chunk by myself over the course of a week.

Here's a picture of the chunk I brought home, you can almost see the hint of red from the chili powder:

 

Here's a closer picture of the slices of cheese that come from my chunk:

I don't know what it is about the taste Petit Basque that I love but it has a texture like creamy parmesan cheese.  I did a little research on the internet and here's some additional "facts" that I learned about this cheese I enjoy so much:

• Type:  Sheep milk (comprised of 45% fat)
• Origin:  Pyrenees Mountains, France
• Process:  brined for two hours and then ripened 70 days
• Texture:  smooth and firm
• Shape:  Cylindrical, weighing approximately 1.25 pounds
• Color:  Butter yellow
• Rind:  Thin and covered with thin plastic to prevent mold
• Flavor:  Mild, nutty and slightly fruity
• Petit Basque is made in the Pyrenees Mountains using the same techniques that local shepherds used hundreds of years ago BUT Petit Basque has only been around since 1997, a relatively "new" cheese on the scene.

Because I love this cheese on it's own, I usually eat mine with Carr's table crackers so that the cracker doesn't interfere too much with the creaminess and flavor of the cheese.  When I do feel like jazzing it up a bit, I eat it with some raspberry jam since the sweetness of the jam goes well with the nuttiness of the cheese.  Vive la frommage!

Dark chocolate chevre brownie...

As I've mentioned before, I'm a regular watcher of several Food Network TV shows - one of which is Throwdown with Bobby Flay.  It's a show where he challenges the best cooks to their signature dish and then independent two judges decide who does the dish better.  One of the reasons I love the show is that the people he challenges are regular people like you and me, not professional chefs, and he often gives great tips on the food he's cooking.  A few weeks ago there was an episode where Bobby challenged two ladies, Kathryn and Shawna, from Vermont to a brownie cookoff (more on that below).  As part of the episode, Bobby consulted with a chef on the different kinds of baking chocolate and their uses.  Here's what I learned:

1. Unsweetened chocolate - 100% cocoa powder, best used in pastries where you want a very strong chocolate flavor
2. Bittersweet chocolate - 70% cocoa powder/30% sugar, the "go to" chocolate for professional chefs in baking because, if the recipe calls for sugar, when you add it to the bittersweet chocolate, it doesn't put the sweetness factor over the edge.
3. Milk chocolate - 45% cocoa powder/25% sugar/30% milk, used mostly in sauces and as chips in cookies

Ok, back to the throwdown.  Kathryn and Shawna are known throughout Vermont for their dark chocolate chevre brownie, which they make out of a bagel shop in South Hero, Vermont and then sell in local stores or via the internet.  The brownie is essentially a dark chocolate brownie mix (made from scratch) to which they add a layer of creamy chevre cheese.  Chevre (according to the Food Lover's Companion) is a pure white goat's milk cheese with a delightfully tart flavor.  I love cheese and was impressed by these two ladies and their creativity in thinking that adding goats cheese to a dark chocolate brownie would be a great idea.  Needless to say, they easily beat Bobby Flay's brownie (peanut butter caramel brownie) to win the show.  As soon as I saw that independent judges thought that their brownie was better than Bobby Flay's, I knew that it was the perfect give for my mother and her upcoming birthday.  So, I got right online and placed an order for 6 dark chocolate chevre brownies to be delivered ASAP to Chicago so that they would arrive in time for my mother's birthday.  Thanks to the miracle of technology, I was able to video chat with my mom on her special day and to see how excited/surprised she was to get the brownies.  Here's how they arrived:

 

Needless to say, the brownies were a hit and so I'm recommending them to anyone who might be inclined to try something new.  Here's the link to the Vermont Brownie Company, you won't be disappointed.

Picking lemons/limes/oranges/etc.

Two of my friends recently got me a cooking class for Christmas (they know me so well!)  We met the instructor at a farmer's market and we each purchased several items from the stands based on the recipes that the instructor had selected for the class.  One of the items on our lists was to pick several lemons and I learned something from the instructor about how to pick them.  She told us that you want to pick lemons that feel heavy for their size because it means that they have a lot of juice in them.  I've used this advice since that day and have to agree that it's a good way to pick lemons, so now I'm sharing it with you.