My next boyfriend, Grant Achatz

God did a really nice job on this one. Cooking and good looks. Can he be my birthday present? I’ll be in Chicago in two weeks. I’ll be standing by the door of Alinea waiting for him to come out.

Not dead yet and behind the story: Daruma

Posting frequently has been less of a priority lately. But I did make some changes to the design last night. The previous one was driving me crazy. Hopefully I’ll be getting some time to write my own CSS and get my own domain.

DCist just put up another article entitled ‘My Daruma‘ (a.k.a. title was not my choice). I like this article a lot better than the last, and it was much easier to write. I think the bulk took about 45 minutes. In retrospect, the last article about the fish market was bordering on cheese and hyperbole. It had a lovely tacked on “let’s write some more intro and conclusion in five minutes.” It also took me about two evenings to get into any presentable form.

An aside about the Korean and Japanese kimchee export conflict was edited out of this article, but you can find the information here. Miscellany for people who like to erudites. I find the political aspects in culinary birthright pretty interesting. The article was also originally titled ‘Learning to Live Without Molecular Gastronomy.’ Though if I wanted to get downright dorky, I should have entitled it: ‘Dr. Ferran Adria or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Foam.’ Yeah that doesn’t make much sense, but I love me some Dr. Strangelove.

Look at me, I’m a real girl now!

DCist article: Nothing Like the Smell of Fish in the Morning

Recipe: Trout with Lemon, Butter, Capers and Artichoke Hearts

I made a trip to the Maryland Wholesale Seafood Market this weekend. I was on a mission to find fresh fish, in particular, some trout for J. I got a one pound trout for about $2 and a tilapia. I had to scale and gut it. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, I don’t have pictures. It was a bit smelly, but a different experience. Afterward, my mom called me and warned me not to puncture the organs or it will make the flesh bitter. Not very helpful afterward now, huh? But I think I managed unscathed, and filleted the little sucker.  I checked out some various web sites and found BBC’s How to Make the Most of… recipe site. There I noticed a recipe for trout with lime and capers.  I decided lemons were a much better match for this recipe. As I was shopping for the capers, I noticed artichoke hearts and decided the slightly acidic brinyness would be a great match for the rest of the dish.

Recipe:

2 trout fillets, pre-rubbed with salt
3 tbsp. butter
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 tbsp. capers,  rinsed and drained
5 artichoke hearts (approx.),  chopped into bite size chunks

In a frying pan, melt 2 tbsp. of the butter and heat until it foams. Pat dry the fillets with a paper towel (so the fillets don’t stick) and pan fry in the butter. Flip after approx. 3 min. on one side. Cook until almost completely cooked and remove fillets from pan. Add remaining 1 tsp. of butter, lemon juice, capers and artichoke hearts. Cook until slightly browned and pour over top of fish.

Review: Oohhs and Aahhs

Before heading over to see Rough Magic, K. and I went to Oohhs and Aahhs for dinner. Good ol’ soul food with a nice little lunch counter. We shared the fried chicken wing dinner with mac and cheese and collard greens.

The wings are pre-fried, and then refried when you order them. The coating on the wings was nice and light, perhaps less salty and flavorful than I would have liked. I think I lean more strongly toward the flavors of Popeye’s fried chicken. The meat wasn’t too dry, and after eating a few more wings, they started to have the right level of saltyness.

The collard greens were vinegary, and lacked the brackish flavor I tend to find with collards. I liked them better than the ones cooked with meat(!!). The mac and cheese was good, but somewhat mushy. I think it lacked the sharper cheese flavor that I was wanting. They also were slightly runny. Nonetheless I still found them tasty.

Both the lemonade and iced tea are extraordinarily sweet. The portions here are enormous. It was a good thing that K. and I shared. Although there was still a good quantity of mac and cheese leftover when we were done.

K. and I found ourselves out of place – a bunch of wanna-be yuppies in a soul food joint. But we were outdone by a girl who ordered baked chicken without gravy and attempted to get a diet soda. Obviously she was on a diet. But who goes to a soul food joint and doesn’t order gravy. <shakes head>