Meatballs in Red Sauce with Spinach

For a special Friday night, I decided to make some meatballs with a special red sauce we had bought a little bit ago. I put it on top of a bed of garlic and onion sauteed spinach. I have no clue how much it cost nor do I really care, this was a special occasion meal. The most expensive piece to the whole dish was obviously the sauce. We had bought it from one of our local Williams-Sonoma artisan food fairs.

I wish I could say that everything we used was fresh, but I certainly wasn't going to grind my own pork nor did I have time to properly spice fresh ground pork. I totally cheated, but whatever, it tasted good.

First things first I took the sausages out of their casing. After that I added a few spices, cracked in the egg, mixed that all up, added in the breadcrumbs, and mixed it all up again. I portioned that mix into 15 sort of even meatballs, and then chilled them for half an hour.

After the meatballs had settled and chilled I baked them for about 18 minutes, and they were mostly cooked through at that point. I finished them by putting them in the red sauce that I had brought to a boil and was simmering to keep warm.

Speaking of that sauce, it came from a local company called barefoot charlie's food co, and it was his red "simply awesome" sauce. It had a really nice sweet flavor to go with heavy hints of roasted garlic and small hints of basil. The roasted garlic, especially the pieces that were in there, had an amazing flavor.

For a little vegetable matter, I sauteed the bag of frozen spinach that we had with some garlic and onions. I prefer using fresh spinach, but for whatever reason it's hard to find in grocery stores here in NYC. I don't get it, but you work with what you have. It added a little freshness despite being not fresh at all, and it was a good base for the meatballs.

Here's the finished product! Overall the dish had a ton of flavor. I undersalted the vegetables on purpose as I knew that the meatballs, since they were made with sausage meat, would have enough salt and flavor on their own. The sweetness and garlicky flavor from the sauce added even more depth and really finished things off nicely.

We paired the meal with a half bottle of a nice 2001 Crianza (that's M's hand). It was a luscious and mildly sweet red that paired perfectly with the dish. It was the icing on the cake of a wonderful, home-cooked celebration meal.

Goodbye to The Marrow

Back in January 2013, we went to The Marrow, Chef Harold Dieterle's new German-Italian restaurant that had opened about a month earlier. We've always been big fans of Chef Dieterle and love Perilla and Kin Shop, so it was a no-brainer that we would head over to The Marrow that winter (for our dating anniversary, actually). Earlier today, we read on Eater the sad news that, for economic reasons, The Marrow was closing up shop tomorrow night. Since we never got around to posting about The Marrow back then, we figured now was a good time for a nostalgic look back at our visit.

The Marrow had a menu of German and Italian inspired dishes, based on the two sides of the chef's family.  The menu was split up into meat plates (appetizer sized), starters, mains and sides. Since we like both German and Italian cuisine, we tried to get a mix of both sides of the menu for our dinner.

We love German Rieslings, and A especially loves Riesling Spätlese, so we were happy with the selections on the wine list.  We decided to go with the Meulenhof 2011, and it was wonderful.  It had a nice sweetness to go with hints of summer and fall fruit.

The first food to arrive was the bread in the form of a pretzel roll.  The bread was really good.  The outside of the roll was a little harder than M thought it would be. She had been picturing one of those soft pretzel rolls with the same texture as a warm, soft, buttery pretzel (like these).

For dipping, they gave us olive oil and stoneground mustard.  The olive oil wasn't really necessary, but the mustard was a great match for the pretzel roll.

We got a bunch of starters and meat plates, together with one main course, to split.  One was the garganelli with tuna, puttanesca, olives, capers, and bread crumbs (one of the night's specials, if we remember correctly). It had both tuna marrow and tuna belly. We were mostly attracted to this because we had no idea what tuna marrow was or what it would taste like. Overall it was good, but the flavor was more olives than tuna. The sauce and the homemade pasta were both quite nice.

We also got the duck liverwurst with cornichons, green mustard, and grilled bread. We're both big fans of liverwurst on sandwiches, so we just had to try this. The liverwurst itself was very good, probably the best part of the plate. We had thought the grilled bread would be grilled with olive oil (like bread we had in Greece and other places) but it was more plain. The cornichons were fresh and crisp, and the green mustard had an unexpected sweet and tart flavor, like a green apple. Overall, we liked this dish.

Next was the skillet-braised cuttlefish with garlic bread, guanciale, and white wine. The broth, which had bacon and a nice garlicky flavor, was a little on the salty side. The cuttlefish head was good though, very tender. We don't really remember as much about this dish as we do about the liverwurst though (good thing we have some limited notes from that night).

There were two dishes that we knew for sure we were going to get at dinner since they were the two that everyone was always talking about in their reviews of the place. One was the bone marrow, which came with sea urchin, fried potatoes, meyer lemon aioli, and baby celery greens (which reminded us of watercress). The grilled bread was just like the one that came with the liverwurst, but it worked well here because it was just the vehicle for the very flavorful bone marrow and uni. This was a very tasty and well-balanced dish. The uni was not that briny and didn't taste as much like sea water as it sometimes does, and the marrow wasn't as gloppy as it could be, so the two textures worked well together here. We liked this.

We only got one main dish and it was the one that everyone talked about - the pan-fried duck schnitzel with quark spaetzle, hazelnuts, cucumber-potato salad and stewed wolfberries. What was really nice was that they knew we were sharing, so they automatically brought it out to us on two separate plates without us even asking for it. We would have been perfectly happy just picking off of one plate, but that was a really nice service touch.

There was a reason the duck schnitzel was the most famous dish to come out of The Marrow. The whole dish was excellent. Although M isn't usually a huge fan of the texture of duck, she thought it was perfect for schnitzel here. The amount of the frying was just right, and the various salads and sides that accompanied the schnitzel were good complements. After all this time, we don't quite remember which was our favorite, but all together, it was a really good dish.

We also got grilled baby romaine lettuce with pecorino and a warm lemon-anchovy vinaigrette for a side dish, since we felt like our other choices were severely lacking in vegetable matter. Although grilled romaine often tastes really good and this was no exception, we probably didn't need to get this. It was overshadowed by how good the other dishes were, in our opinion.

As we were celebrating our dating anniversary, we had to indulge in some dessert. One dessert that we got were the Berliners which had Goldschläger cream and malted chocolate. We didn't take any notes about dessert so we don't remember exactly what we thought, but we think these were good. But donuts are often good.

Over a year later, we have no memory of what these are, but we got them. Streusel cookies? No idea. Sorry.

Overall, we had a very satisfying meal at The Marrow, especially the duck schnitzel. But given the choice, we would go back to Perilla or Kin Shop before The Marrow, and for that reason, it doesn't really surprise us that this is the one that's closing up. It's sad because it was an ambitious concept that was executed fairly well in our opinion and we can only imagine that, as a place reflecting the chef's heritage, it's especially hard to let go of something that's so representative of you and your family. We're glad that we were able to have dinner there once, and we're looking forward to even more of Chef Dieterle's food on future visits to Perilla and Kin Shop.

Pumpkin Joe-Joe's

I love trying the seasonal varieties of the Joe-Joe's cookies at Trader Joe's, even though after trying them, I usually still prefer the standard vanilla-vanilla Joe-Joe's. Last year, we tried the Halloween ones which I thought were so cute (they had little jack-o'-lantern faces on chocolate cookies with orange cream filling), but then we absolutely hated them. I don't know if we just got a bad batch or what, but they had absolutely no flavor and tasted kind of stale. They're still one of the only things we've ever returned to Trader Joe's. After that experience, I had pretty low expectations for the pumpkin Joe-Joe's ($2.99) but was hoping for the best since I do love Joe-Joe's.

I should not have worried, because these pumpkin Joe-Joe's were fantastic. Trader Joe's is overrun by pumpkin stuff right now, but to us, this is one of the best products in the lot. The filling tasted like cream mixed with pumpkin pie spices, but it wasn't overpowering like some of the other pumpkin products. It had just the right amount of spice mixed in with the cream. The cookie itself also had a nice flavor. They reminded me a bit of graham crackers. The whole thing just tasted very much like fall, which was great, but what we really liked was that the balance of the flavors was there and not just hitting you over the head with pumpkin spice. Probably helped that the cookies have actual pumpkin puree in them and not just the spices.

Buy Again? Absolutely, although they either sell out really quickly or have a limited supply (we've only seen them at the store once although we've looked on multiple trips, and on that one trip, they were a single column in the cookie section), so I'm not sure we'll get them again this season before they're gone.

Done Through 39

When I started the 52 week challenge at the beginning of the year, I hoped I could stick with it for the entire year. I like the feeling of completion that you get at the end of a project, and I thought I could learn a lot from an experiment like this. Somewhere along the way, I ended up really far behind and thought I would never catch up. I started doubling and tripling the challenges during some weeks and by Week 40, I was finally up to date. I went completely out of order in completing the challenges for this quarter and also out of order in getting these posts up, but it feels really good to have gotten through the end of the third quarter and to have made it this far!

Here's the third quarter of challenges:

Week 27 - tenderizing (spring chicken roll-ups with lemon dijon pan sauce)
Week 28 - 'Murica (Hoppin' John and Southern greens)
Week 29 - from your pantry (chicken with sauteed corn and tomatoes)
Week 30 - clean eating (cod with roasted vegetables)
Week 31 - breading/dredging (breaded zucchini chips with garlic aioli)
Week 32 - your favorites (slow cooker split pea soup)
Week 33 - melons (watermelon and feta salad)
Week 34 - opposite side of the world (Vietnamese shrimp summer rolls)
Week 35 - pickling (pickled red onions for chicken tacos)
Week 36 - hot and cold (trio of sloppy joe sliders)
Week 37 - apples (savory apple saute)
Week 38 - Central Asia (plov)
Week 39 - stew (African-style peanut stew)

(If you missed them, here are the posts for the first quarter and the second quarter of challenges.)

Out of this set, our favorites, which we both chose independently, were probably (in no particular order) 'Murica, clean eating, and opposite side of the world. We would definitely make all of these again.

One more quarter left to finish the challenge for the year. I am determined to try to stay on track, and to stay up to date even during the crazy holiday season, and to do the best that I can!

Week 39 - Stew

I love making stew, so the biggest problem with Week 39 was figuring out which stew to make for the challenge. I wanted to do something completely different from the ones I'd done before, so as soon as I saw this African peanut stew on Budget Bytes, I knew that was the one. A few modifications to fit the ingredients we had and/or could get, and we would be good to go!

For the stew, I used:

- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)

- 4 large garlic cloves, minced ($0.10)

- 1-2 inches of ginger, minced ($0.15)

- 1 large onion, diced ($0.75)

- 2 medium sweet potatoes, diced ($0.98)

- cumin to taste (a few tsp) ($0.05)

- red pepper flakes to taste (a tsp or so) ($0.05)

- 1 can of chicken breast ($1)

- 1 can of diced tomatoes ($0.75)

- 6 oz can of tomato paste (free - from mom's pantry clean-out)

- 1/2 cup of natural creamy peanut butter ($0.70)

- 6 cups of water ($0)

- 3 heaping spoonfuls of chicken bouillon ($0.90)

- 16 oz bag of Southern greens, chopped ($3.49)

- 1/3 bunch of cilantro ($0.60)

A big pot of stew for $9.72, which made dinner as well as a few lunches, was definitely a great deal. Even if I paid for the tomato paste myself, it would be just above $10. That's almost double what her recipe came out to on Budget Bytes, but I did add chicken, the greens were way more expensive, and well, NYC grocery prices. That's usually the culprit.

The process for making this stew is really easy. Mince the garlic and ginger and then saute until garlic is soft. Add the onion, saute. Add the sweet potato, saute. Add the chicken and diced tomatoes, along with the cumin and red pepper flakes. After the onion and sweet potato are softer and translucent, add the tomato paste, peanut butter, and mix it all together. It will be thick and stuck together like the stuff in the pot above.

Once everything is mixed up, add the water and bouillon. Turn heat up to high and cover the pot so it comes to a boil. During all that, chop and add the greens. (Yes, for me, this meant taking the lid on and off but I think the cover is really just to get it to boil faster.) Once the stew is boiling, turn heat to low and simmer for at least 15 minutes (uncovered). Mash some of the soft sweet potatoes on the side of the pot. Once it's done, add cilantro to the bowls. Very easy stew! I pretty much followed the directions in the recipe other than adding chicken and tomatoes when I thought they might work.

This stew was really good and filled with healthy ingredients. We really liked it. The only criticism would be that the peanut flavor wasn't as strong as either of us thought it would be. Perhaps I needed to use more peanut butter or maybe the creamy peanut butter didn't come through as much as the crunchy would or maybe it was TJ's peanut butter compared to another brand. Whatever it was, I think I'd just use more peanut butter next time. But this stew was hearty, warming (of course I made it on the warmest day of the week, but whatever), and comforting. This was really easy, and I would definitely make this again.

Week 38 - Central Asia

I don't have much familiarity with Central Asian cuisine (outside of Afghanistan), so the Week 38 theme was a bit of a stumper. I could have taken the easy route (for me) and done something Afghan, but I really wanted to concentrate on the former Soviet -stan countries. I especially wanted to concentrate on Kyrgyzstan, since I'm a Sporcle addict and Kyrgyzstan is special to Sporclers. The only dish I really knew about (before researching) that I thought I could make, with modifications since a lot of Central Asian cuisine is red meat heavy, was plov, a dish of rice mixed with meat and vegetables. I found this recipe for a Kyrgyz plov which looked manageable for me, so that was going to be my challenge choice!

For the plov, I used the following ingredients:

- canola oil for sauteing ($0.10)
- 1 large onion, chopped ($0.75)
- 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, chopped into cubes ($2)
- a couple handfuls of cremini mushrooms, chopped ($1.50) *
- bunch of carrots, chopped ($1.20)
- 1 can of diced tomatoes ($0.75)
- 3.5 cups of water ($0)
- salt to taste ($0.05)
- about 1 tbsp of cumin seeds ($0.05)
- a few threads of saffron ($0.50)
- 2 cups uncooked basmati rice ($0) **
- cloves from half a head of garlic, peeled ($0.10)

* I've never seen mushrooms in a plov recipe, so it's probably not an authentic modification, but we had a giant box of cremini mushrooms from Costco and mushrooms are good for you, so they went into the pot.
** The rice would probably be $1 or so, but we're still using the basmati rice that I won at a health fair last year, so it was free for us!

For $7-8, we got a lot of food. We had enough for dinner for both of us the night we made it (in plentiful portions), plus three more lunches. Not bad at all for such an inexpensive meal.

This was a true one pot meal (I guess I could have made something like this during one pot week!). The steps for making the plov (which were only slightly modified from the recipe that I was guided by) were as follows:

1. Heat oil in pot over medium heat. Add onion and cook until translucent.
2. Add chicken and cook over medium high heat until cooked through. (It should be until it's browned but sadly nothing really browns in this nonstick pot (as much as I love this pot).)
3. Add carrots and mushrooms and cook until they soften.
4. Add tomatoes and cook for a couple of minutes.
5. Add water and let boil for 5 minutes.
6. Add cumin, salt, saffron.
7. Pour rice evenly in the pot (without stirring). The rice should be on top of everything else and be just covered by the water. Flatten the rice out to be even.
8. Add garlic cloves to the top, just under the water line.
9. Cover and reduce heat to low. Cook for 22 minutes.
10. Check to make sure rice is done. Re-cover and then turn off heat and let stand for 3-5 more minutes. (I suppose this is better if you don't lift the lid to check if it's done, but it's always puzzled me as to how you can know if it's done if you don't lift the lid.)
11. Stir everything together and eat!

The plov was good, but tasted relatively basic and I feel like I could have made it better. I've never had authentic plov from a Kyrgyz restaurant (or any other Central Asian place), so most of these changes and/or improvements (in addition to the ones I already made with mushrooms and chicken) are probably not traditional, but I could imagine making changes like:

- more salt and cumin, or maybe some other spices, maybe some white pepper
- adding something crunchy like water chestnuts for some texture
- using a nonstick pot to get some more browning on the meat and vegetables (onions especially)
- throw in even more vegetables

With all my changes, it sounds like this would become less of a Central Asian plov and more of a one pot rice dish in the future. To be clear, we did like this dish as it was, and we would like to try real plov at a Central Asian restaurant. But one of the best takeaways from this for me was the technique / strategy for a solid one pot rice meal! Definitely filing that away for future use.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been in a mood to bake for a while, and more specifically I've been wanting to bake chocolate chip cookies. I've had Kenji's "Best Chocolate Chip Cookie" article saved for a while, and I finally bit the bullet and made them. I didn't have baker's chocolate to chop up so I had to substitute in regular semi-sweet chocolate chips, but other than that I followed his recipe as closely as I could.

The prep is fairly simple and is described in the link above. I will say, though, that I love the smell of browning butter. It's fragrant, buttery, caramel-y, and nutty all at the same time. It's a beautiful thing. After combining all of components, I scooped it into one of our glassware containers to let sit overnight.

After chilling overnight, the dough was ready to be scooped and baked. The recipe says it should make 28 cookies so I decided to make a dozen tonight, a dozen maybe tomorrow, and the last 4 the following night. This, however, is when my reading comprehension starts to fail me. Kenji notes that you should use a 1 oz ice cream scoop or tablespoon to parse out the cookie dough. For whatever reason, I figured our 3 oz ice cream scoop would work just fine. After scooping all 12 cookies out, I finally realized that something didn't look quite right, but by this time I wasn't going to redo things. The oven was preheated, and I wanted to get these in.

Because of the size, I had to adjust the cooking time a slight bit. Kenji recommends 13-16 minutes while rotating front to back and top to bottom rack midway through. I tried that by going 7 minutes and 7 minutes, but they were nowhere near done. I ended up rotating again, cooking 2 minutes, and then rotating a 3rd time, and cooking another 2 minutes. By this time they were starting to approach the proper amount of cooking so I pulled them out, put a small amount of sea salt on top, and waited to move them to the cooling racks.

After very impatiently waiting for the cookies to set a little more, M and I finally grabbed one each. These cookies were still a little too warm so they were still a little too soft. Our impatience was not unrewarded, though. These cookies are really good. They're soft and chewy just like we like them, and they have a good amount of sweetness in the cookie portion to balance the buttery and salty components while fully accenting the chocolate chips. Do I think using chopped chocolate chunks instead of chips would have been better? Maybe, but I'm not really going to complain. I have a feeling M and I will have no trouble devouring all of the cookies I made tonight plus any cookies I make in the coming days.

Good Food Made Simple

I have this bad habit of starting posts and never finishing them. Last year, around this time, I wrote a good portion of a post about the Good Food Made Simple chicken apple sausage egg white burrito, but then never posted it. My guess is that I did come upon it sometime during the months between then and now, but at that point, I couldn't remember enough about it to finish it. Luckily for this post's survival, I bought the same burrito recently and had it for lunch today, so now I can complete this and get it out of our enormous archive of draft posts.

Package design has changed over the past year, but it's the same thing

I had never tried the Good Food Made Simple brand before, but I like the idea behind the products and it showed up on Ibotta (an app that you can use to get savings on grocery products and more, like an electronic rebate - if you want to sign up, you can use my referral link here) last year so I decided to try it. The great thing about the app is that it's gotten me to try a lot of products I've never had before and broadened my grocery horizons. The burritos were on sale the last time we went to Target so I picked one up, remembering I had tried the brand but not which variety. Turned out it was the same one.

Mostly tortilla and egg and cheese

A bit of a breakfast burrito (that I ate for lunch both times), the burrito contained egg whites, chicken apple sausage, cheddar cheese sauce, Monterey jack cheese, roasted potatoes and some vegetables. The predominant flavors were the tortilla and the cheese. There were hints of flavors from the sausage, potatoes, eggs, and vegetables, but I don't think there was that much of each ingredient in there to give it more than just a hint of their flavors. The tortilla was soft and chewy, and luckily not gummy like some frozen burritos you can get it. I think overall I liked the tortilla and the burrito more the first time I had this, but it was still a good lunch.

A closer look

The burrito tasted really light and healthy, and it's not a gut bomb like some "real" burritos can be. I would buy this again if it were on sale, but I think I'd like to try another flavor to see if I like it better.

Week 36 - Hot and Cold

The theme for Week 36, "hot and cold," popped up in the upcoming challenge list right around the time that there was a challenge on Top Chef Duels involving a hot and cold duo. I wasn't exactly sure what to do when the challenge was named. Hot and cold complementary dishes? Hot and cold elements mixed in one dish? A spicy salad, therefore being both "hot" and cold? When the week rolled around (since I was still behind on challenges), I learned that it was the second - mixing hot and cold elements in one dish. The BBQ bean sliders that I really like would have been the perfect dish for this challenge, but I wanted to do something new. I decided to use the slaw from the BBQ bean sliders and pair it with a turkey sloppy joe. This well-reviewed recipe for Chef John's turkey sloppy joes sounded good, so I decided to make a trio of sloppy joe sliders for the challenge.

The ingredients for the sloppy joes (only slightly adapted) were:

- 1 tbsp butter ($0.25)
- 2 small onions, diced ($0.50)
- salt and black pepper to taste ($0.10)
- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.60)
- 1/2 cup cold water ($0)
- 3/4 cup ketchup ($0.48)
- 1.5 tbsp brown sugar ($0.08)
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper ($0.03)
- 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce ($0.08)
- 1/2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder ($0.05)
- 2 cups water ($0)
- 6 mini hamburger buns ($1.27)
- 1/2 cup chopped green onions ($0.25)
- 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese ($1)

The total for the sloppy joe ingredients came out to about $8.69. The slaw cost about $3 (as usual) so the total amount was approximately $11.69. Not really cheap, but not bad for a filling dinner for 2.

I followed the directions from the recipe pretty closely on this one (details here).

The steps for the sloppy joes were basically:

1. Melt butter, saute onions and season with salt and pepper.
2. Add ground turkey and 1/2 cup cold water. Cook turkey and break up meat.
3. Add ketchup, brown sugar, cayenne, salt and pepper.
4. Keep stirring and breaking up turkey until liquid reduces.
5. Stir in Worcestershire sauce and cocoa powder.
6. Keep stirring frequently. Add a cup of water and after reducing, another cup of water. Liquid should be reduced and a thicker sauce.
7. Cut hamburger buns.
8. Remove from heat and mix in green onions and cheddar cheese.
9. Assemble sliders.

(Don't forget to make the slaw while all this is cooking or make it the day before like I did!)

My final steps for the sliders were a little different because I was making a trio. I wanted to try a slider with the slaw, but without the green onions and cheese, so before step 8, I scooped out some of the turkey and assembled it with the slaw on one slider. For the second slider, I added only the sloppy joe as the original recipe dictated, and for the third, I added some more cheddar cheese and green onions as non-mixed in garnishes. It's too bad our rectangular plates are in storage because that would have been much better for presentation.

We liked the sloppy joe sandwiches. A had been picturing Manwich the whole time, so he was expecting it to have much more sauce than it did, but we both thought it tasted really good. The slaw worked well with it, and we ate more of it as a side dish to our sliders. I guess only one slider was technically "hot and cold" but since we ate it all together, it counts. Between this and the BBQ bean sliders, I think I prefer the bean sliders as an everyday dish for our rotation, but this was really tasty. I would make this again.

Farewell Hot Doug's

Yesterday was the last day of service for the Chicago sausage institution, Hot Doug's. For years, they've been putting out all sorts of hot dogs and the lines were almost as legendary as the sausages, especially after Doug announced that they would be closing up for good this October. As soon as the announcement went out, the already long lines (we waited 30-45 minutes in the middle of a random weekday afternoon when we went a few years ago) started becoming hours-long before opening. We had hoped to make one last pilgrimage out to Hot Doug's when we were in Chicago this summer, but with the lines getting as long as they were, we just couldn't do it (mentally or in our schedule).

On our one and only trip to Hot Doug's, we were in the middle of a Chicago hot dog crawl (hopefully we will get around to recapping that at some point), but still indulged in 3 hot dogs and an order of fries (not the famous duck fat fries, since we weren't there on the weekend). We weren't sure when we would make it back again since Hot Doug's wasn't the easiest to get to without a car (and we usually don't rent a car when visiting), so we wanted to make sure we tried a bunch of different things, even if that shortened the rest of our hot dog crawl. In retrospect, it's a good thing we did, since we never did make it back.

One of the sausages for which Hot Doug's was most famous was the foie gras and sauternes duck sausage with truffle aioli, foie gras mousse, and fleur de sel. It sounds decadent, and it absolutely was.

M isn't the biggest fan of foie gras so this sausage wasn't her favorite, but she did appreciate how different it was and how someone who did like foie gras could love this. For her, it was unbelievably rich, almost too rich to even eat half a sausage, but the truffle aioli was quite tasty. A really liked this hot dog, but he's also a bigger fan of rich, decadent food compared to M. The silky creaminess of the foie gras and the truffle aioli offered an amazing array of flavors as well.

We also decided on the bruschetta, mushroom and beer chicken sausage with pesto aioli, roma tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella cheese. We're not sure how often they had this at Hot Doug's since it was on the specials board and not the standard menu (but so was the foie gras and that was probably there most of the time).

It's hard to remember two years later, but from what we remember, this one tasted much more light and fresh than the foie gras. It was basically like eating a light caprese salad on top of a hot dog. A bit messy, but really good. This was really fresh overall despite the heavier mozzarella, and we really liked it because of that.

Lastly, since we were in the middle of a Chicago-style hot dog crawl, we had to try the one they just called The Dog, their Chicago-style hot dog with "all the trimmings." As promised, it came with pickle, tomato, onion, mustard, and neon green relish.

This was a good version of a Chicago-style hot dog and we enjoyed it, but it wasn't our absolute favorite from our hot dog-filled trip. But since we were in Chicago and trying one of these at every other spot we went to, we had to get one here too.

As we mentioned before, we didn't have the opportunity to try the famous duck fat fries, but we did get cheese fries. We were so hungry by the time our food arrived, since it was late afternoon by then, and we dug right into them as soon as we finished taking pictures. They were really good and the cheese was just the right amount of "melty."

It's no surprise that Hot Doug's was a sensation in Chicago. The quality of the sausages was great. They had so many varieties. The menu was always changing. They had weekend only specials like the duck fat fries. Doug himself was always there and you could tell how much he really cared about everyone enjoying their hot dogs. It was a great experience and he really made it special.

Our visit to Hot Doug's was good, but we can't imagine camping out overnight in the rain to be there on the last day. We can't believe there were so many people that they had to cut the line off before a lot of people even woke up for the day. Incredible, but a testament to how loved this place (and Doug) was by the city of Chicago. A bit sad that we weren't able to visit again and try more, but grateful that at least we were able to make that trip once. Goodbye, Hot Doug's!

Fall Succotash

As the weather turns cooler, I'm starting to venture back to my old Hale and Hearty haunt. This week I tried their Fall Succotash. Per their website it is described as "This tasty vegetarian offering is a medley of fresh corn, wild mushrooms, sweet potatoes, and baby lima beans."

This soup is much thicker than I thought it was going to be. In fact, it was almost like a stew. It was chock full of hearty fall vegetables, and the starch from the corn and lima beans paired really nicely with the subtle sweetness from the tomato-based broth. It was very warming and very comforting and was perfect for the cool Fall weather we had this week.

Speaking of the corn and lima beans, they stayed nice and crisp and offered some nice texture balance to the stewed green and red peppers, onion, mushrooms, and sweet potato. There's also a nice hit of heat at the end that I wasn't expecting. The only thing I would say was a bit of a drawback was that there was a bit of stringiness from either corn husk or the sweet potatoes.

Overall I really liked this soup. It was well balanced flavor-wise, it was incredibly comforting for a cool Fall day, and it was very filling. I would definitely get this soup again.

Week 34 - Opposite Side of the World

The theme for Week 34 was "opposite side of the world." Using the Antipodes Map, I figured out that the exact opposite side of the world from us was in the ocean off the coast of western Australia. We've already had Australian week, so I didn't want to do that again. Instead I looked along the entire meridian that lined up with the opposite side of the world, which led me to Southeast Asia. My original plan was to do something Indonesian but rather than go ingredient hunting, I switched it up and decided to do Vietnamese summer rolls. I've had spring roll wrappers and vermicelli in the pantry for ages so it would let me use some of that up.

The last time I made summer rolls was in college. The Vietnamese students association had some sort of party (I don't remember the details) and they had ingredients laid out for you to assemble summer rolls on your own. It was the first time I had ever done it, and while it was really fun, I was pretty bad at it. I watched some Vietnamese friends quickly and nimbly roll them up, and thought with practice maybe I could get there. I bought the materials a while ago, but of course, never got around to making them. Cooking from the opposite side of the world was the perfect opportunity to try again.

I looked at a bunch of different recipes for summer/spring rolls and thought about all the rolls we've eaten over the years (many, many rolls since we love eating them so much), and then put all that together to come up with a plan for our rolls.

The rolls required:

- 10 rice roll wrappers

- 2-3 oz of rice vermicelli

- 1 hothouse cucumber

- 1 lb of carrots

- 1/2 bunch of mint

- 1/3 bunch of cilantro

- 32 small/medium cooked shrimp (only enough shrimp for 8 rolls)

- 1/2 bag of romaine lettuce

I honestly have no idea how much this cost. I bought the wrappers and vermicelli so long ago that any estimation is probably completely wrong. The ingredients above that I do know the prices of cost about $12, but that also doesn't include the sauce. This wasn't a cheap dinner, that's for sure, but it did make a lot of food.

I was planning a sauce of 2 parts of hoisin sauce to 1 part peanut butter with some water whisked in to thin it out. Unfortunately the bottle in the fridge that I thought was hoisin sauce was actually oyster sauce and we had no hoisin sauce. This is what it looks like when you have to make your own. Luckily A was able to make the sauce while I prepped all the other stuff, since the prep for this recipe is somewhat labor intensive.

We followed this recipe for hoisin sauce, mixing up soy sauce, peanut butter, molasses (finally a use for molasses after Jamaican week!), rice vinegar, a finely minced garlic clove, sesame oil, sriracha, and black pepper, and then adding another 1/3 cup of peanut butter, to get closer to the 2:1 sauce ratio I was going to do originally. A combined all of that together on the stove, let it warm, added some water, and it smelled really good. I don't know exactly how much all of this came out to, but probably $1, $2 at the most. It made more than enough sauce and we had leftovers, so we probably didn't need to make this entire pot of sauce.

Other than the sauce, there isn't really any "cooking" involved in summer rolls. Just a lot of prep and assembly. For the prep, we needed to thaw out our cooked shrimp, peel and grate the carrots, thinly slice the cucumber, roughly chop the mint, pull apart the cilantro leaves, chop the lettuce, and prepare the noodles. I guess there's cooking involved in preparing the vermicelli, but it's really just boiling a pot of water and then letting the noodles sit in the water until they're al dente (or the desired texture).

To assemble, quickly soak the spring roll wrapper in warm (or room temperature) water (no more than a few seconds), pile everything inside, and then roll it up. It sounds easy but it's not really that simple. You have to make sure you don't over (or under) soak the wrapper, don't add too much inside, and figure out how to roll it tightly without ripping the wrapper.

I was clearly out of practice with rolling the summer rolls, but by the fourth roll, it was actually looking much better. I felt proud that my roll wrapping was actually getting better over the course of the night!

The rolls themselves were quite good. The sauce was a little on the salty side, but that could also be because I used way too much of it. What we like most about summer rolls is how fresh and light they taste, and even piling all the ingredients into ours, they still retained that lightness. The shrimp were good, the vegetables made it feel really healthy, and the herbs added great flavoring. I love summer rolls, so I would definitely be interested in having more summer roll nights, but the prep did take a while. We do have a lot more roll wrappers left. Maybe I'll figure out a variation that doesn't require as much prep time!

October 2014 Custard Calendar

The October custard calendar is up and it's full of all the flavors you would expect to see for the height of fall (lots of cinnamon and caramel and nuts and pumpkin). There's a few flavors we haven't tried before (even though they are not completely new to SS) so hopefully we'll discover something great this month!

Here's the schedule (and our review scores):

Monday - cinnamon pear cobbler (new to us - never made it last year)
Tuesday - oatmeal creme pie (6.25/10)
Wednesday - peanut butter marshmallow swirl (new to us - never made it 2 years ago)
Thursday - candied apple (new to us - never made it last year)
Friday - shackenstein (8/10)
Saturday - caramel walnut cake (new to us)
Sunday - pumpkin pie (8.75/10 on an early curve)

To celebrate the holiday, we may stop in for some shackenstein on a Friday, but other than that, we're both really intrigued by the cinnamon pear cobbler and A is also interested in candied apple since he's never had one and it's a regional thing. Hoping we try something new that we love!