Danny can't keep us down

Tropical storm Danny dropped a considerable amount of water over Boston yesterday, a steady rain that started well before I awoke and continued through the evening. That didn't stop my very motivated friend Katie from going to the Union Square Farmer's Market and bringing me some amazing, huge heirloom tomatoes.


What to do with these beauties on a rainy afternoon? Make grilled cheese, of course! I had a loaf of Clear Flour Bakery's Seven Grain in my fridge from earlier in the week, so we braved the deluge and walked around the corner to the South End Formaggio in search of cheeses. The Formaggio is one of my favorite places in the city, not to be outdone by its older sister, the Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge. The size of the South End location just makes it much more intimate.

One of the very nice guys at the Formaggio set us up with a trio of cheeses to complete our sandwiches: a Pétit Comté from Jura, France, a Pomerol Meule Duroux from Auvergne, France, and a Provolone for its melty goodness. We grabbed a box of local greens with the SEF's phenomenal housemade balsamic vinaigrette and a few rosemary salted caramels and, after sampling some cheeses and homemade hummus and ful medames (an Egyptian fava bean spread), we were out the door.

The cheeses were just as delicious on their own as they were combined. The provolone was as expected, mild and smooth, sliced impossibly thin. Next, the Pomerol. Another mild cheese, yet sharper than the provolone, with a smooth, almost airy texture and a flavor that sticks in the back of your mouth. My Google search yielded no results, though I did learn that Pomerol is the smallest wine-producing region in Bordeaux and "meule" translates into "wheel" -- you learn something new every day. The Comté was my personal favorite, a dry, salty cheese, denser than the rest with an almost grainy texture. It turns out that the buyers at Formaggio Kitchen have visited this farm; you can read about the cheese and watch a video here.


How was our grilled cheese? In a word: delightful. The sandwich itself had a perfect crunch, augmented by the gooeyness of the cheeses and juices from the tomato. The tomato became sweet, the tomatoeyness of it a testament to the quality of real produce grown the old fashioned way, vine-ripened, roots in soil. It struck me that we shouldn't have been blown away by the flavor of this tomato, that this is the way tomatoes are supposed to taste; our palates bored by countless supermarket varieties. Although I suppose if this makes us appreciate the wonder of the late summer tomato, it might be all for the better.


All in all, a perfect lunch for a rainy afternoon.

Fried Hollandaise?

I can't take credit for finding this video (it was on Eat Me Daily, a blog on all sorts of weird food related things -- endlessly entertaining), but it's incredible. The chef at wd-50 in New York has created a molecular gastronomized take on eggs Benedict, complete with cubes of fried hollandaise. NPR's Science Friday went to learn how it was done: watch the video here.

It doesn't have quite the same comforting appeal as traditional eggs Benedict, but I'd love to try it. The process of creating this dish is fascinating!

Fresh Corn Polenta

I'd read about fresh corn polenta recently, and, being a huge fan of both fresh corn and polenta, I thought I'd give it a go. After a trip to the farmer's market, I picked up some sweet corn along with tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash, and eggplants. My philosophy with roasting vegetables is that if you're going to go, go all out; there's really no reason to roast a small amount of vegetables as they keep well in the fridge and you can eat them throughout the week with minimal effort. Two sheet pans of roasted vegetables later, I was ready to make my polenta.

As it turns out, turning sweet corn into polenta is an incredibly quick process. All you do is grate your ears of corn (roughly two per person) on the coarse side of a box grater into a sauce pan (note that this makes somewhat of a mess, so wear an apron). Then simmer the corn over low heat, stirring frequently until it thickens, stir in a little butter and salt, and you're set. All in all, a 10 minute process.

The flavor of fresh corn polenta is entirely different from it's traditional counterpart. It's incredibly sweet, which obviously has something to do with the type of corn you're using, so if you can find a less-sweet variety of corn, choose that one. Coupled with the roasted vegetables that had caramelized a bit, the sweetness was a tad overwhelming. However, the polenta was great with the tomatoes that had retained some of their acidity.

Regardless of the flavor, the presentation was lovely. I'm not sure if I'll be making fresh corn polenta again, but I'm glad my curiosity has been satisfied.

Jamie at Home

This afternoon I found Jamie at Home on sale at the bookstore (my favorite, Trident Booksellers on Newbury St.) so I thought I'd pick up a copy. It's a rather large, weighty book; not really the best purchase to carry around on an incredibly hot, humid day when there were still lots of stops and a lot of walking to be done on my errand-running venture. Oh well.

Now that I'm back in my somewhat cooler apartment, I've had a chance to page through it in a little more detail. It all centers around Jamie Oliver's love of his garden, which makes me long for a living space that includes a little of the outdoors (growing herbs on the fire escape last summer didn't go as well as planned). All I'd need is a 3x3 foot box of soil, or even some large planters, where I could grow some herbs, tomatoes, zucchini, maybe even some climbing beans. I'd be able to feed myself the entire summer (and longer, if I learned how to can)! Maybe at my next place... TBD.

The book is divided into seasonal "chapters," then by each fruit or "veg" (love the English colloquialisms) with a nice introduction on each, including tips for growing and some simple preparations. Then come the recipes themselves, each carefully thought out to best showcase the star ingredient, none too complicated or fussy, just good, honest meals that you can just imagine on his dinner table in the English countryside (I picture a large, rustic wooden farm table, with long benches or vintage metal chairs, a personal favorite of my own). The photography is beautifully simple and is even more charming on thick, matte paper.

There's even a section on barbequeing in the summer chapter. It's interesting because I think that here in the US, we automatically associate a barbeque with a big grill, either charcoal or gas (or both), but always upright on legs or some sort of stand. The images here though are more reminiscent of a campfire, with coals spread on the ground, vegetables wrapped in foil and placed directly atop, or meat suspended on a spit above the flames. I've seen travel shows focused on Argentina, a very meat- and barbeque-centric culture, where giant metal "grills" are suspended high above a massive wood burning fire. Koreans grill right at the table. Cooking meat over an open flame seems to be such a primal way of preparing a meal, spanning across drastically different cultures, yet not surprisingly, the American love for tools, appliances, and convenience has provided us with the only apparatus for grilling that involves a contraption that will set you back a few hundred dollars, at the least.

I haven't yet tried any of the recipes in the book, but I'm anxious to do so. Although meat appears as an ingredient quite a bit and isn't something I eat all too much of, I think I'm going to enjoy working my way through Jamie's seasons.

Bina Osteria

It's Restaurant Week here in Boston, and while this is normally one of the highlights of the year (along with the other RW in February), this time around I haven't been feeling quite as inspired as usual. Granted, on Monday I had a delicious dinner at Rialto consisting of a salad of beets three ways (roasted, fried in thin slices, and pickled), and bluefish with a corn-tomato salsa of sorts (really, you can't go wrong with fresh corn and tomatoes this time of year, but deliciously executed nonetheless), and blueberry sorbet with a lime zest meringue (incredibly refreshing). Coupled with a table by the window overlooking the Charles Hotel plaza, you really couldn't beat this meal for $30.09.

Today's lunch, however, did not go as well. A few friends and I went to lunch at Bina Osteria, the new venture of the owners of Lala Rokh, a fantastic upscale Persian restaurant in Beacon Hill, as well as Bin 26, a wine bar/enoteca where I've never been, and haven't really heard much about in a positive or negative light. Regardless, I was looking foward to this meal. Let's just say that I, and my dining companions, were underwhelmed.

We'll start with the decor. Very clean and modern, with high ceilings obscured by some sort of large, white panels hanging at varying angles, which creates an interesting somewhat architectural look. The decor is generally white and sparse, with raw concrete support pillars in some corners and floor to ceiling windows partially hidden by sheer gold on silver curtains. Tables are covered in white cloth, with the exception of a long, high table near the back wall that was made of some tan-colored rock composite where patrons sit across from one another on bar-height stools. We almost missed the bar and low, red couches in the lounge upon entrance. In sum, not the most interesting, but nothing offensive.

On to the food. We were given a basket of three varieties of breads upon arrival, one a more traditional Tuscan, one a moist, airy bread, and the other a dense almost biscuit-like roll, served in a nice wooden bowl along with olive oil for dipping. All fairly good, yet nothing to write home about. I do, however, appreciate the variety. I read that psychologically, when at a restaurant, people will order something different from their companions, even if they all want the same thing, because in the moment, we crave variety, yet over time we could eat the same dish over and over and be perfectly happy, if not happier because over longer periods of time, variety becomes unnecessary (just think of your favorite pizza). We treat simultaneous alternatives (the bread bowl) much differently from sequential alternatives (monthly pizza night). But I digress.

Appetizers up next. "Etruscan" soup was actually quite good: a puree of chickpeas with rosemary, a drizzle of olive oil, tiny squiggles of sliced squid as a garnish in the center, and a little twisted breadstick placed elegantly across the bowl. Next time I'll remember to bring a camera, but the sight of this in a pure white bowl with a large rim was quite charming. A pleasing contrast of textures between the smooth puree and slightly chewy squid, with the hint of rosemary peeking out from the background. The tomato and mozzarella salad was fairly typical, slices of fresh mozzarella topped with halved cherry tomatoes and arugula, drizzed with olive oil. If made with quality ingredients, you really can't mess this salad up, and Bina didn't disappoint, serving it on a white, rectangular plate. So far, so good.

Entrees were a different story. "Bruschetta" turned out to mean something along the lines of "things piled on top of bread." Boring bread, basically a quarter of a dense Tuscan (i.e. no salt) baguette, but not nearly as good as any the bread we had seen earlier in the meal. My "Branzino Bruschetta" was described on the menu as having marinated branzino, fennel, and tuna bottarga (roe). Let's work in layers: The branzino was placed on top of the bread and was fine, not too salty but still a little fishy, the fennel was... fennel. I like fennel, but it was just shaved and placed on top of the fish. The tuna borgatta? Nowhere to be seen. No sort of oils, vinaigrettes, anything. Bland to look at with the muted tan of the bread (not even a nice golden crust), pale pink-ish fish, and white slivers of fennel (on a much too small rectangular white plate), and just as poor a showing in flavor. Uninspiring, to say the least. The other bruschetta contained an olive "paté" that seemed more like a tapenade, "dried" tomatoes (they were fresh), and arugula. Not exactly what was advertised, but certainly more colorful than the other dish, albeit on the same bread. Slightly better, but not much. And where to begin with the lamb? Two overcooked pieces of lamb approximately the size of Tic-Tac boxes stacked with two slices of polenta the same size. The vegetable caponata, as described on the menu, was conspicuously missing.

A case of false descriptions? Perhaps. The menu certainly made our lunch sound much better than it turned out to be. Overall, not awful, but I won't be rushing back.

A new beginning, of sorts

I am blogging. Yet another one amongst many, and writing about food, at that. No, I haven't been inspired by Julie & Julia, in fact I think I'm delaying seeing that movie to avoid just that. But nonetheless, here we go.

I've decided to write about food for a few reasons, but primarily that it happens to be one of my main interests. I have no formal education in the subject, I've never cooked for more than a party of six or so, but it's something I'm passionate about. I enjoy food -- the sights, the scents, and mostly, the taste. When I travel, visiting the local markets is at the top of my list. I've become the resident Boston restaurant expert amongst my friends and colleagues. And given the size of my kitchen, I'd say I'm a pretty good cook. Does this make me qualified to write about it? Probably not, but I'll give it a shot (Clotilde and Molly Wizenberg had to start somewhere too).

So for my inaugural post, I'll leave you with a photo of some truffles at a market in Munich, approximately this time of year in 2007. Please bear with me as I play with formats, topics, and writing styles. This will surely be an interesting journey ahead!