A dinner party and strawberry cake

A friend of mine, Jack, hosted a wonderful dinner party Saturday night. With summer here, my birthday last Thursday, and Jack being newly hired, there were plenty of reasons to celebrate.

The evening began with three different cocktails and cheese. A mango mojito, blueberry vodka lemonade, and a dark violet, a drink made from a violet liquor, vodka, bitters, and has mint and lime. It was wonderful. One of the cheeses, a blue, was creamy, heavy, and luxurious. While most spread it on crackers, I favored a carrot, whose natural sweetness lended well to the salty unctuousness.

This was followed by more drinks (wine, beer, etc) and a variety of dips. Our other host, Tom, is “fond of dippy things. It lets people dip, eat, drink, talk, dip, talk, eat, drink……in that order.” He had an artichoke, black bean, split pea and sun dried tomato, eggplant, and hummus. An impressive spread, each of which leading to the other.

Dinner was kebabs. In my experience, kabobs should usually consist of one ingredient, say onions, or chicken. Putting the vegetables and meat on one kabob leads to either undercooked meat, or burned veggies. However, this was not the case. The steak was still juicy and delicious, while the shrimp was crispy, and the chicken still moist. An excellent job done by the grillman Jack.

Dessert was my department. I made my mother’s strawberry cake, a wonderful summer favorite. It starts with a box of yellow cake mix. Step 1, throw away the instructions from the box.

Combine the cake mix with 4 eggs, 1 cup vegetable oil, some vanilla extract.

Get a 12 oz container of frozen strawberries (can get with or without sugar, but if without sweeten them slightly) Defrost, mash, and divide in half. Put half into the cake mix.

Take a .3 oz package of jello (the small one, regular or sugar-free) and dissolve in ½ cup water boiling water. Let set for about 3 min to come off the boil, and add to cake mix.

Place batter in a well oiled 9x13 baking pan and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Take the other half of the strawberries and add ½ stick of butter, 1 cup powdered sugar, and a little vanilla. Simmer.

When cake is finished but still warm, poke holes in the top with a fork and add topping. Immediately cover with aluminum foil. Let set overnight. When serving, warm in 300 oven for 10 min. Result is a moist and delicious cake that will be sure to impress. It sure did Saturday night!

Weekend In Baltimore

With over 60 interviews performed over the past 1.5 weeks, and the final hiring decisions made, I left work at 4:00 on Thursday, determined to make it to Tio Pepe in downtown Baltimore in reasonable time for dinner.

I met my parents and my aunt and uncle at this classic taberna just of

St. Paul Street

. The restaurant was segmented into what seemed to be arms of a cave, completely white-washed on the sides. Wait staff were clad in bow ties as our portly and jolly waiter brought in our pitcher of sangria. I started my meal slightly later with a bowl of garlic soup. The heady, red broth was inundated with a unctuous shavings of garlic. Spanish spices and onion melded together to create a mélange of flavor. My seafood dinner was topped with a thick orange seafood sauce that coated my plate with buttery flavor accented with cumin and curry-like spices. My mother got the duck which was crispy to the point of me wanted to eat its bones. Crab covered rockfish was one of the specialties of the evening which came in a huge portion and was, like my seafood platter, covered in the rich sauce. Dessert was a rolled cake with French silk pie-like filling. One of the cakes came topped with toasted pine nuts, their smokiness and sweetness truly coming to front.

The next day, after a vigorous, self-guided walking tour of the city, my mother and I went to Lumbini, a Nepalese and Indian restaurant. As I have mentioned before, I prefer the lunch buffets because of the variety and deal they offer. Both goat and fish curries were available, the former primarily consisting of fatty and connective tissue filled cuts of goat. The tandoori chicken and pallak paneer were always a welcome addition, as was the complimentary milk tea at the end of the buffet line.

Museums, more walking, sunshine, and a trip to a four stall farmers market built up our appetite for Cazbar. Open table allowed me to make a 1000 point reservation at 5:45. My mother and I split the grilled meats platter, and I also had the bean soup. Comparable to any spicy, home made black bean soup, the cup was not out of this world. However, the lamb, kofka, chicken, and beef were superb. Each was charred to medium perfection and was served with rice, salad, and cucumber yogurt sauce, still with string of cucumber rather than being completely integrated.

Having only split an entrée, Tir na Nog was our next stop. An array of appetizers brought forth scallops, still slightly gritty, yet perfectly yielding to the knife, set in a broth that was reminiscent of French onion soup reduced. Grilled oysters were covered in a creamy crab dip and broiled. However, the star of the show was the crab cake. There was just enough egg to hold the lump meat together, while it was drizzled with capers, pine nuts, and a sauce that tasted of old bay and butter, but thicker.

The following morning brought the National Aquarium and the well-known Phillips crab cakes. They were, like the ones at Tir Na Nog, just barely held together with egg, but the spices and/or sauces were absent, leaving me to add my own old bay at the table.

Dinner was a simple concoction of potatoes, grilled chicken, green beans, tossed in a balsamic yogurt sauce. Next to some Caesar salad, red wine, and pineapple for dessert, made for a great night.

Showing us a good time, my parents and other aunt and uncle (both live in the Baltimore area) set out for Paladar Latin Kitchen and Rum Bar. The Caribbean rum sampling had a smooth, a rich, and a paint thinner of a rum. The triplet of cirviches was good and tasted fresh, but was not knock your socks off. What was interesting was that the tortilla chips basket also had plantain chips and taro root chips, a welcome departure from the norm.

After again, walking and shopping to build the appetite, we all took off for Level. This small plates restaurant is wonderful. Seasonal and local ingredients mean a changing menu. The only drawback is that often the plates are so small that sharing can be difficult. The rockfish above a bean coulee was filling and satisfying, the green garlic risotto was thick, creamy, rich, and cheesy. The bison satays were succulent and tender, despite the lack of fat in the meat. The tuna tartar was plated in a pool of soy sauce which was slightly spicy and had both black and white sesame seeds. My only regret is that I couldn’t taste the sweetbreads. My uncle ordered it and was unwilling to share. I cant blame him, as you don’t get in between a man and his thymus gland.

Its Been Too Long - Cocktails and Cuisine

I didn’t fall off the face of the Earth, I just feel off of blogger. My hunger for a good time has not decreased as I am still as gastronomically active as ever…I just wasn’t writing about it. I want to make it a habit of one post per week. Lets start from there, shall we?

Last Friday was a Cocktails and Cuisine night at the Scranton Chamber of Commerce. Various sponsors hosted tables with both food and drink from various countries around the world. The event was attended by about 50 people. The food itself was mostly Americanized versions of a stereotype food from a country. Case in point, Mexico was represented by cheese queslidillas with salsa from a bottle and margheritas from a mix. Japan was covered by sushi, Edamame, and seaweed salad from Atami and sake. Poland had holishki and a beef and cabbage stew. The stew was the definition of easy comfort food. Sautéed ground beef and onions with salt and pepper mixed in with tomato soup and cabbage pieces and simmered. Ireland has ham and cabbage and of course, Guiness. Thai Rak Thai gave their pad thai and it was paired with a mai tai and the person serving was wearing a tye-dye tie (okay to that last part isn’t true). Germany has mini wieners with sauerkraut and pretzels dipped in cheese. Italy with pasta and meatballs, America with buffalo bites and hot dogs. Finally Russia took dessert with a variety of Russian cookies and an orange vodka tonic.

The next day, a friend of mine and I drove to Tunkhannuk for the Wings and Wine festival, conveniently located in the back of a Weis grocery. Your $15 entrance fee did not, as one might assume, get you access to any wings at all. Those had to be paid for at $.75 a wing. We stuck with the wine. As with many wines from this area, many were sweet. Juice with a spike of alcohol was the theme of the day. However, Antler Ridge was able to create fruit based wines that still maintained the integrity of the wine itself. The fruit was clear and present, the wine was on the sweeter side, but it didn’t taste like grown-up Kool Aid. The highlight of the day was the roast pig. When speaking with the pit master and discovering, to my dismay, that he had already sold the head for $20, I was given samples of knuckles, skin, and shoulder. All were slow roasted and very flavorful.

Leaving that festival at around 4, we drove across the city to the Vineyards by the Viaduct wine festival, equally conveniently located in a baseball diamond behind a couple houses. The sign might as well have been a piece of notebook paper stapled to a tree with “Wine Festival” written in pencil. Not willing to pay for one hour of a festival, we let ourselves in and claimed our glasses were lost or broken. As the end of the festival was at hand, wineries had no desire to lug home half empty bottles, so the pours were generous. Again, sweet wines dominated and again, the highlight was speaking with the crab cake vendor who was more than happy to let me take a crab cake (done on the grill and not fried or greasy at all) a mound of balsamic marinated mushrooms, and a plate of seafood and vegetable for $2, as it was all getting thrown away anyway.