Week 42 - Homemade Pasta

I was a little apprehensive about the Week 42 challenge to make homemade pasta. I was worried I would completely screw it up, but I was also a little excited to push my boundaries to do something new. Besides, if I did mess it up so badly that it were inedible, we had plenty of dried pasta as plan B. What was nice was that I had already been planning to do the pasta sauce for Week 41, so it was a no-brainer to combine the two and have a (relatively intensive) completely from scratch Italian dinner.

I decided to make orecchiette, one of my favorite pasta shapes, even though bolognese sauce is usually served with spaghetti. A bunch of reasons why - too lazy to use more equipment, not enough room in the cramped kitchen to take out the stand mixer and attachment with the sauce and everything else going on, and my personal love for shapes. Besides, orecchiette would be great for catching all of the sauce, which is one reason I love it.

I went to a taping of The Chew here in NYC a couple of years ago, and it happened to be an episode on homemade pasta. I still remembered the general steps for how they made the pasta, but it's very different watching and making it yourself. To make sure I didn't completely screw it up, I followed two separate guides for making the pasta. I started with this link for making orecchiette, which noted that orecchiette is usually made with a flour and water dough. That led me to this link for an eggless pasta dough. I don't know if it's more common to do this with or without egg, now that I think about it.

The first step was to create a well of flour (we used about 2 cups), mix in some salt, and then slowly add water (about 1/2 cup) inside the well, folding the flour in to create a dough. We ended up adding some more water after the initial 1/2 cup since it didn't seem like enough, but it ended up being slightly too much in the end. Good thing I had dropped flour all over the cutting board and counter while trying to knead the dough, so I was able to add it in and keep kneading.

Once the dough was kneaded, we wrapped it in plastic wrap and let it sit for about 15 minutes. Next, it was time to actually make the pasta shapes. First was rolling sections of the dough into tubes, and then cutting the tubes into small pieces. The cutting step was easy, but rolling into even tubes was much harder than I thought it would be. A was so much better at it than I was.

Once we had all of the pieces cut, we shaped it around our fingers until we had an entire cutting board full of orecchiette that needed to dry. We let it dry for about 15 minutes while the water boiled. Partway through the drying time, I flipped the pieces over so that the other side wouldn't be so sticky either.

We boiled the pasta for a couple of minutes until it was al dente and then ate it with the bolognese sauce. It had a completely different texture than the dried pasta we usually make. It was a lot more doughy. Not sure if it was supposed to be like that, or if it was just our inexperience. They were fine, and it felt good to know that we had made them from scratch for the very first time.

Would we make orecchiette at home? Maybe. Although it's nice to have fresh homemade pasta, we really don't have a ton of counter space to do this type of thing regularly. And making dried pasta is just so easy. I won't rule it out, but I don't think it'll be a routine thing for us.

Week 41 - Bottled Sauces from Scratch

I wasn't thrilled when I saw the Week 41 challenge was bottled sauces from scratch. We have so many condiments and sauces in the pantry, and the last thing we really needed was to add one more. A had a great idea though - why not just make pasta sauce? It's technically a bottled sauce, so that worked for us. I decided to make bolognese sauce, since we've always wanted to make that at some point, and used a recipe we found on Vintage Mixer as a guide.

The ingredients for the sauce were:

- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)

- 2 tbsp butter ($0.16)

- 1 onion, chopped ($0.50)

- 1 bunch of carrots, chopped ($0.89)

- 1 bunch of celery, chopped ($0.90)

- 1 lb of ground turkey ($4.30)

- salt ($0.05)

- pepper ($0.05)

- cayenne ($0.05)

- nutmeg ($0.05)

- 1.5 cups milk ($0.43)

- 1.5 cups white wine ($1)

- 28 oz canned whole tomatoes with liquid ($1.59)

- 2 cups water ($0)

The total for the sauce was about $10.17, and since we paired it with homemade pasta (for the Week 42 challenge), the total for the entire dinner was under $11. It cost more than a jar of sauce would, but no single jar of sauce from the grocery store would have this much stuff in it or yield this much sauce.

The recipe said it would take 5-6 hours to make the sauce, and they weren't kidding. I probably could have ended it a little earlier than I did, but we were still making the pasta, so I just kept simmering the sauce. The basic steps were:

- prep: chop onions, chop carrots, chop celery

- heat olive oil and butter in large pot (should melt butter first and then add oil)

- saute onion, carrots, celery

- once softened, add ground turkey, season with salt and pepper, and cook, breaking up the turkey as it cooks

- add about 1/2 tsp cayenne and a couple of dashes of nutmeg

- reduce heat to low

- add milk, bring to simmer, and simmer until all milk is absorbed, stirring periodically (this took a while)

- add wine, and simmer until all wine has evaporated/absorbed, stirring periodically (much quicker than the milk)

- add liquid from canned tomatoes and also the tomatoes, breaking the tomatoes up by hand while adding them

- add about 1/2 cup of water and let sauce simmer

- add water (1/4-1/2 cup at a time) and add salt and pepper to taste periodically and let simmer for at least an hour (I just kept tasting it and once satisfied let it go until pasta was ready)

Although there were a lot of steps and it took a lot of time, it wasn't really that difficult to make. There was just a lot of waiting, a lot of checking, and a lot of tasting (at least the last part was fun).

The sauce was pretty good. It didn't have the richness of some of the bolognese sauces we've gotten at restaurants, which is probably because our version was made with ground turkey instead of some sort of red meat. But it was still really tasty, and we were glad that we finally tried making it.

Week 40 - Steakhouse

The first thing you'll probably notice about our Week 40 steakhouse challenge meal is that there's no steak on the plate. I don't eat steak (or cook much red meat at home), so for the challenge, I made the meal that I would be ordering if I went to a steakhouse. I've had plenty of fish dishes from steakhouses, so I decided to make some salmon (the one I most commonly get there) with some typical steakhouse sides.

Coffee-Rubbed Baked Salmon

The first part of the meal was baked salmon, which I prepared with some coffee garlic rub, similar to the coffee challenge from last year. I forgot to also rub it with olive oil like I did that time so the ingredients were just:

- salmon ($9.17)
- coffee rub ($0.25)

After letting it marinate for a while, I baked the salmon in the oven for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees and then let it rest until the other meal components were done. Unfortunately it came out a little on the drier side, which I realized later was because I forgot to rub it with olive oil. Lesson learned for next time. It turned out much better, both in texture and taste, when I used the olive oil last time, but it was still good.

Roasted Herb Potatoes

Just about every steakhouse we've ever been to has had some form of potato side, whether it's baked, mashed, roasted, or something else. I decided to roast some small red potatoes, as I really like that side dish in restaurants with its creamy, flavorful potatoes. I didn't follow a recipe here, but just tried to replicate whatever flavor profile I could remember from the potatoes I liked.

The ingredients were:

- about 1.5 lbs small red potatoes ($1.79)
- olive oil ($0.50)
- salt ($0.05)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- dried rosemary ($0.10)
- 1/2 batch of parsley, leaves chopped ($0.90)

The potatoes were really easy to prepare, and I found myself wondering why I hadn't made them before. The steps were:

- scrub potatoes and cut in halves (or quarters, depending on size)
- grease baking dish and add potatoes
- combine olive oil (maybe 1/4 cup) with garlic powder and rosemary
- add olive oil mixture to potatoes along with salt and pepper
- mix together well
- bake in oven at 400 degrees for about 30-35 minutes (until potatoes are fork tender)
- move potatoes to large bowl
- add parsley and some more olive oil and combine well
- cover with aluminum foil for at least 10-15 minutes (or in our case, until everything else was done)

I covered the potatoes, hoping this would get them to soften up a little more, and it absolutely worked. The potatoes were exactly what I was hoping they would be - full of roasted flavor with a little crispness on the edges but really creamy and soft inside. I definitely plan to make this again.

Green Beans

I usually look for vegetable sides when at a steakhouse and green beans seem to be fairly common. I wanted to try something new so I went with a Williams Sonoma recipe for green beans with glazed shallots and lemon. I think I found it in a steakhouse sides section, even though the description on the page talks about Passover and holiday celebrations.

The ingredients we used were:

- 24 oz bag of frozen French green beans ($1.99)
- olive oil, about 1 tbsp ($0.20)
- 4 shallots, thinly sliced ($0.99)
- juice of 1 lemon and about 1 tsp lemon zest ($0.49)
- salt ($0.05)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- 1/2 batch of parsley, leaves chopped ($0.89)

I mostly followed the recipe for making the dish and the steps were:

- cook green beans in boiling water until mostly done and then drain
- heat olive oil in large pan
- add shallots and saute for a few minutes
- add green beans and cook for a few minutes (trying to mix in the shallots which was way harder than it should have been)
- add lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, and pepper and cook for a few more minutes
- remove from heat and add parsley and mix together well

The green beans turned out pretty well and I liked them a lot more than I thought I would. A thought the lemon was overpowering, which is probably because I used more lemon juice than the recipe dictated, but I kind of liked the punch from the lemon combined with the shallots flavor. I thought it really livened up the plain green beans. If I make this again, maybe I'll use a little less lemon juice.

Belgian Endives

Belgian endives are one of those vegetables that we've had before (but not often) and have never made. I think I saw it on some steakhouse menu when I was looking around, and I thought it would be fun to try something new with an ingredient that was new to me. I decided to try a recipe for braised Belgian endives from Chowhound since I wasn't really sure what else to do with them. (I don't know if this is technically really braising since the endives aren't sauteed or cooked at all prior to being submerged in the cooking liquid, but that's the title of their recipe.)

The ingredients were:

- 3 Belgian endives (2 white, 1 red) ($2.99)
- 1 spoonful of chicken bouillon and 1 cup of water, mixed together ($0.25)
- 2 tbsp butter, melted ($0.12)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- 2 tsp sugar ($0.05)
- 1 tsp white wine vinegar ($0.10)

Making the endives was pretty simple:

- prep endives (wash, cut lengthwise, and quarter)
- combine all non-endive ingredients in large pan and heat over medium heat
- add endives in single layer and cook, turning every so often, until soft and the sauce has reduced and liquid has almost evaporated (the sauce got very thick in our pan)

The endives were so buttery and a lot sweeter than we were expecting considering not that much sugar was added. A thought the flavors were really good and there was no bitterness of any type that you sometimes get with endives. I liked how soft these were and thought they were good for fall, although I might use a little less butter and sugar next time and the sauce would probably still be fine. Once cooked, the endives didn't seem that substantial in amount, so it was good that we had other sides too.

This was a pretty good "steakhouse" meal even though there was a lot of running around the tiny kitchen trying to get 4 dishes done at once (or more accurately, trying to figure out where to put everything for the various stages of the dishes). It was a little on the expensive side for dinner, just over $21 for the two of us, but that's certainly cheaper than any steakhouse meal out. It was the first thing I made after our trip to San Diego, and it felt good to get back into the kitchen to make something new. We were pretty satisfied.

PDX Stumptown

I started out our trip to Portland much like I thought I would, drinking coffee. After landing it was close to 1am back here in NYC, but that wouldn't stop me. Stumptown is something of a Portland institution. It's probably the most well-known coffee roaster from the area. When I saw that we had gotten on to the ground in time to visit their airport outpost I knew I wasn't going to pass that up.

The item that jumped out at me the most on their menu was the nitro poured cold brew. It wasn't the cheapest, but you need to pay for good coffee. They have the tap right by the register, and I got to watch the woman working expertly pull a smooth, cascading cup full of dark goodness.

The coffee itself was a cold, smooth entry point into the Portland coffee scene. There was little to no lingering sourness from the beans used. Overall the flavor was bold and rich, and even though I keep using the word, the coffee itself was extremely smooth. Some cold brews come out a bit harsh, but the nitro pour, as it does with beer as well, makes things a little creamier. The coffee kept me awake long enough to get to my parents' house and gave me a pretty good indication of what I could expect from Portland and its magical coffee.

Orlando Memories

Five years and one month ago (or thereabouts), we went to Orlando with the primary goals of seeing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and stuffing our faces at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. It was our first time at both, and although the days were long and busy and exhausting (tons of steps!), and A unfortunately got sick, we had a really good time.

Now that we've finally finished recapping the trip, here's a summary recap of everything we did and some reflections, since our memories of this trip have been spread out on this blog over the last five years.

We left in the morning from Newark, grabbing a breakfast of cinnamon pretzel sticks, chili, and a Jamba Juice smoothie for breakfast before our flight. (Oh, to be young(er) again.) The flight from NYC to Orlando wasn't long, only a few hours, and we got there in time for a late Chick-fil-A lunch. (Since we wrote that post two years ago, Chick-fil-A has opened a couple of stores here in NYC, so it's no longer so hard to find.) Then we were off to rent our car and check into our hotel and get settled in at Disney.

Most of the time when we've stayed on the Disney World premises, we've stayed on the Epcot side. That made sense this time especially since we were pretty much going to spend all of our time at the Food and Wine Festival, but we've always preferred staying there to not take buses. It's a short walk to Epcot, a short water taxi to Hollywood Studios, and then our preference was usually a walk through Epcot to the monorail to get to Magic Kingdom. No easy way to get to Animal Kingdom, but three out of four is pretty good. This time, it was tough to get a room because of the festival, and we ended up on the Vacation Club side of the Boardwalk. It was fine, and the location was good, but pretty expensive.

After checking in and relaxing a bit, it was time for dinner. We were really excited because we had made advance reservations for Boma at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We love Boma, which if you're unfamiliar is a buffet of African dishes. We like it mostly because it's different, and we always end up trying some dish we've never had before. We're glad places like Boma exist, since in many parts of the country and world, it's not really that easy to try food from different regions in Africa. We're lucky here in NYC to have done some exploration, but even here, it's not that easy, and so much of the continent isn't covered, so there is so much we still haven't tried. Boma is a great way to push out of your comfort zone, and it's on our must list for Disney visits. It's even easier if you have a car since getting there by bus could take forever. (We've done it.)

We spent our first full day in Orlando at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Universal's Islands of Adventure. I love Harry Potter, so I had been wanting to set foot in Hogsmeade and Hogwarts for a long time. We were pretty excited about our lunch at the Three Broomsticks - fish and chips, Cornish pasties, pumpkin juice, and butterbeer. It was fun getting to try things that they always talked about in the books and the movies, even if the food/drinks weren't that exciting on their own. We also checked out the shops and went on all of the rides (although only A rode the Dragon Challenge).

We spent a lot of our Universal Day doing Harry Potter stuff, but we also visited the other "islands" (mostly Marvel Super Hero Island, Jurassic Park, and Seuss Landing), going on more rides and picking up a few snacks along the way (chicken fingers and ice cream). Universal's fun, although the price keeps climbing, and we can imagine that buying tickets for a family to both halves of the Universal theme park (which you'd now have to do if you wanted to see all the Harry Potter stuff, since the new half we haven't seen yet is in the other park) could be really cost-prohibitive these days. Our first day concluded at Downtown Disney/Disney Springs with a late dinner at Raglan Road, enjoying the music and food at the Irish pub.

For the next 2.5 days, we spent our time at Epcot, which is our favorite part of Disney World, eating at every single kiosk at the Food and Wine Festival, going on rides, visiting the pavilions of the World Showcase, and soaking up the hot Florida weather. Some of the kiosks and dishes from 2011 are still around in this year's festival, but others have since rotated out. The ones we visited were (in alphabetical order):

Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Brazil
Brewer's Collection
Canada
Caribbean
Cheese
China
Craft Beer
Desserts and Champagne
Fife and Drum
France
Germany
Greece
Hawai'i
Hops and Barley
Ireland
Italy
Japan (parts 1 and 2)
Mexico
Morocco
New Zealand
Poland
Portugal
Scandinavia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea 

As we mentioned in our final post on the Food and Wine Festival, some of our favorite kiosks were Scandinavia, Hops and Barley, and New Zealand. There are also some more notes in the overview and some tips in the post about the 2012 festival. We tried every kiosk since it was our first time and we weren't sure when we would be back next. We probably could have had more self-control but we wanted to eat everything. It was a fun challenge trying to hit all the kiosks, and we succeeded!

After our short Orlando trip, it was time to go home, with one last meal at the airport before leaving Florida. We haven't been back to Florida since then, and we're not sure when we'll be back there next. Disney is always a fun place to go, but it's gotten really, really, really expensive. Hopefully someday we'll make it back and also back to the Food and Wine Festival.

Goodbye Florida

After spending a few days at Epcot, it was time to bid farewell to Florida. We thought we would probably return soon, but it's been five years now and we haven't made it back. So I guess this is still the most recent meal we've had in Florida.

We headed to the airport late in the day after visiting the last few kiosks at the Food and Wine Festival. If I remember correctly, we didn't go to the same food court as we did when we got there, but instead opted to eat closer to our gate. We found ourselves at Qdoba, where we got fairly standard Qdoba fare, so I won't get into it here (especially since I'm not 100% sure of everything we got). We've written enough about Qdoba from other visits.

As we waited for our flight, A also got a coffee drink from some Cuban coffee chain that we don't remember the name of and doesn't appear to be there anymore. He doesn't remember anything special about it this many years later. It was some frozen mocha concoction and clearly didn't leave much of an impression.

That's the last stop on our Orlando trip. Next up - a summary of our trip (reviewed over five years...) and general thoughts about visiting Orlando!

Raglan Road

After spending the entire day at Universal's Islands of Adventure, we went back to our hotel to rest briefly and then headed out to what was then Downtown Disney (and is now Disney Springs) for a (very) late dinner. Since it was so late, options were a bit more limited, but luckily the place we wanted to go, the Irish pub, Raglan Road, stayed open late. When we got there, it was filled with people eating, drinking, listening to music, and generally having a good time.

Since our visit was five years ago, we don't remember a ton about the food itself, but the experience has stuck with us. We started out with some drinks, a cider for me, and a beer for A, but we couldn't tell you anything more about what they were specifically. It was nice sitting at our table, relaxing, watching the entertainment, and having a drink after a long but fun day.

We started out with an appetizer called Calamari City, described as "salt and pepper calamari and mixed tempura vegetables with a spicy remoulade." This was a little more unique than most fried calamari dishes because of the inclusion of the vegetables. The vegetables were very welcome because, outside of onions, they were pretty much the only vegetables we had all night.

We got two main dishes for dinner, and at this point, I couldn't tell you whether we split them or ordered separately, and if we ordered separately, who ordered which one. The first was the beer-battered fish and chips served with tartar sauce.

We also got something called "bangers and booz," Guinness and onion bangers on mash, topped with caramelized onions and beef stew. Basically, a really heavy but tasty version of bangers and mash.

Raglan Road was fun and a great escape. We liked that they set out to provide a fun Irish experience, complete with entertainment and a building that itself was apparently shipped from Ireland. We wish we remembered more about the details of the food, but it has been over five years now so it has faded a bit. We do remember that we thought the food was solid, a bit heavy and filling, but good. Part of that was because of what we ordered - all fried food plus bangers and mash - which was just a continuation of a really unhealthy eating day that started at Universal with more fish and chips, chicken fingers, and Cornish pasties. After our more balanced and vegetable heavy meal the night before at Boma, we had spent the entire day for the most part eating fried food. That said, we would return to Raglan Road again and maybe just make some different (less heavy) choices.

We ate so much at dinner that we needed to take a stroll around Downtown Disney before returning to our hotel, where we took a really late night swim in the pool for further digestion and relaxation before sleeping. It was a pretty late night and we were exhausted from spending the entire day at the theme park, but it was a lot of fun. The next day would finally begin our adventure at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival which we've already completely written about (our favorites list is here and links to all the reviews are in this post), which means our recaps for this Florida trip are almost done!

Hop on Pop Ice Cream Shop

We haven't posted in a bit (feels like longer than 9 days), first due to excitement over the Cubs World Series win and then pre-election stress and anxiety that made it hard to focus. But now that we've moved into post-election despair, time to try to restore some sense of normalcy and get back to posting every day if we can. First up, finishing the few recaps we have left from our Orlando trip from 5 years ago, since who knows when we'll be back to Florida next. - M&A

After our day of wandering around Universal Studios Islands of Adventure we decided to get another snack. If you've been reading us consistently, first I'd like to say thanks, and second you know that I really like ice cream. We opted to stop off at Hop on Pop Ice Cream Shop, a Cat in the Hat inspired shop.

The first thing we noted was that, due to its inspiration, the shop itself was very whimsical. M left it to me to order our snack, and I went a touch overboard. One thing that tends to happen on vacation is that we overeat really badly. This was no exception. I opted to get a large waffle cone filled with cookies and cream, topped with hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry.

The ice cream was really rich and creamy and tasted fantastic. It was a good, balanced sweet with just the right amount of broken up cookies. The hot fudge, whipped cream, and cherry seemed a tad excessive, but, again, it was vacation. The waffle cone was nice and crisp, and didn't actually leak that much somehow. While we probably should have gotten a smaller snack, I was more than happy with our choice.

Uncured Pepperoni Pizza

We first tried this pizza as a sample a few months ago and liked it, but didn't end up getting it for dinner until recently. Here's the quick review.

Product name: Wood Fired Naples Style Uncured Pepperoni Pizza

Price: $4.99

Quick review: This pizza combined pepperoni with a bunch of different cheeses (primarily provolone, but also fontina, monterey jack, and parmesan) and tomato sauce on top of a crust that they describe as hand-stretched and cooked in a wood-burning stone oven. It was pretty quick to make, about 12 minutes in the oven on our pizza pan, and came out well. The texture of the crust was good, better than some other frozen pizzas, the pepperoni was bold and full of flavor, and the combination of cheese worked well together. We also liked that the pepperoni was uncured pepperoni with no nitrites.

Buy again? Yes. It was good, but it remains to be seen whether it is our favorite TJ's frozen pizza.

Buenalba

When we first saw the October spotlight cheese at Trader Joe's, we were excited and couldn't wait to try it. Of course, we were in San Diego without a refrigerator, so we couldn't try it then, but we put it on our mental shopping list to pick one up once we got home.

The buenalba cheese with paprika is a blend of raw sheep's milk and raw goat's milk. The paprika is mixed into the cheese itself, and the cheese is a really bright orange color. We ate it plain with crackers, like we do most of the spotlight cheeses, instead of mixing it into a recipe. We thought this cheese was just okay. It was really mild in flavor, and we were expecting more from it given all the focus on paprika on the label and in the description. There was nothing wrong with it, and we did enjoy eating it, but it didn't make much of an impression on us.

Buy again? Probably not.

Battersea Pie

We had an eventful afternoon sightseeing in London after our stop at Nordic Bakery. I got bird crap in my hair near Piccadilly Circus, which didn't raise my opinion of the place, as it just seemed like a busy, touristy intersection these days. We stopped by Whole Foods and ate some free cheese and chocolate. We walked around central London and lucked into seeing the Horse Guards Parade with no advanced planning. We found ourselves near Big Ben and Elizabeth Tower around golden hour on a clear afternoon which made for some really beautiful views. We learned that the bathrooms in the Westminster train station (which you had to pay for) were atrocious. We got our first glimpse of the Thames while crossing Westminster Bridge. After all of that, we got really frustrated with inconsiderate hordes of tourists and just the oppressive crush of too many people on streets that were really not big enough to hold them, so we got on the Tube and went to Covent Garden for a snack.

Nordic Bakery was never meant to be our entire lunch, and we always intended to go somewhere else for another small meal, so perhaps I'm overstating our "escape" to Battersea Pie, but that's how it felt. We left behind the crowds near Westminster Bridge, got on the Tube, and then took a nice walk through a park on our way to Covent Garden. Once there, we descended into a little pie shop at the foot of the stairs where there was no line (because it was off hours), there were no annoying crowds, and there was good food. It felt like an escape to us.

Battersea Pie was probably the best pie we had during our entire time in London. We got the mince beef and onion pie, which was definitely large enough for us to share, along with a side of baked beans. It was so good. The flavors were rich, and the filling was like a delicious meat gravy. It had so much more flavor than the pie we had on our first day in London. The baked beans weren't that different from beans we'd had before, fairly standard, but just not as much sugar which was good. We wanted more pies, but we knew we had a nice dinner coming up that night, so we couldn't eat too much.

We were hoping to have some good pies in London, so we were really glad we found Battersea Pie. After our pie, we walked around the Covent Garden area for a little bit and then watched a fun street performer. It was a nice end to our afternoon before we went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. Whenever we get back to London, we would love to get another pie (or pies) from Battersea.

Nordic Bakery

On our third day in London, we finally started doing some sightseeing (that wasn't food-related). Our first stop was Piccadilly Circus, but before we got there, we stopped for a light lunch at Nordic Bakery's Golden Square location. I don't remember how we found out about the bakery, but I had written in my notes that they had, among other things, a Finnish pastry and we hadn't done anything yet for WorldEats for Finland, so we really wanted to go. The bakery was packed when we got there and it was hard to find a seat, although admittedly some people were just taking up tables without actually eating or drinking anything.

A started off with a pour-over coffee (£2.60, all prices from current online menu and similar to what we paid last year), which they called a filter coffee. He found it a little weak and watery with not much flavor. He didn't like many of the coffees in London, but that's a topic for another post. Besides the coffee, we got a few snacks to split. The first was a cinnamon bun (£2.90). According to the bakery, every Nordic country makes a unique cinnamon bun and theirs is a take on the Finnish style.

This cinnamon bun was really dense but had a nice sweet flavor to it without being overwhelmingly sweet. It was very sticky. We saw some review on Yelp before we went there that the bun was hard as a rock, but that was definitely not the case with ours or any of the other ones we saw while we were there. I don't know if that person was expecting Cinnabon, but this is a different style and frankly I liked it better. The sweetness also seemed much more natural.

The second thing we got was the karelian pie (£2), which was the Finnish snack we had come for in the first place. They describe this on their menu as a "rye crusted savoury snack with rice or potato mash filling, served with butter spread." We had never seen or heard of this pie before, but we've never been to a Finnish restaurant or close to Finland itself.

We got the rice version of the pie, and the rice filling on the inside had the consistency of rice pudding (which we like). It was a little sweet, but the butter spread on top helped make it into a savory pie. The crust was a lot thinner than we were expecting before we ordered it, so the entire pie was very soft. It was a really interesting snack, very tasty and worth trying, but not our favorite part of the meal. We haven't really had anything like it before or since, and would likely try it again if we had the chance.

To balance out all of the pies and pastries, we also got the leverpostej sandwich (£4.40), which was an open-faced sandwich with liver pate and pickled beetroot. This was our favorite part of our meal at the bakery. The pate had really nice flavor and wasn't too metallic, just very balanced. The beets were really fresh and went well with the pate. The ingredients on the sandwich were all good quality and the whole thing tasted very clean. We just found it a little expensive since it wasn't very large, as you can see since there is a fork in the picture with it.

We enjoyed the food we got at the Nordic Bakery, and if we happened to be passing by again, we would drop in again for another snack (but maybe not coffee). Now that we've tried the Finnish snacks that we wanted to, we probably wouldn't take a big detour or make a special trip just to visit, but we would definitely consider trying some more snacks if in the area.