Kitchen Chick

Frita Batidos — Review in February Current, Photo Essay here!

Our Current review of Frita Batidos is up (for more descriptive details have a look and feel free to rate it), and here are our photos from that visit.  This place has made it onto our short list at present, so we've been back there multiple times and can say that they're still good.  We'd avoid them at peak times, though, because it gets crowded. 

The fish frita has gotten spicier and more exciting, by the way...

 

Conch fritters -- very tasty!  With various sauces.

 

A flock of fritas!  Clockwise from back left: beef, chorizo with everything ("frita loco"), chorizo with fried egg, fish.

 

Back:  Inspired Cuban, front: Cuban Sloppy Joe (basically, a brioche roll filled with picadillo, which is excellent).

 

Sides:  clockwise from left, "beans, rice, salsa, and cheese", black beans, coconut ginger rice.

 

Plantains: back, with cinnamon sugar; front, twice-fried ripe plantains.

 

Rum soaked pineapple.

Roasted Bok Choy

I was helping Tammy cook one of her supper club dinners, and we had to do something quick with the baby bok choy she bought. I don't like bok choy all that much. A bite or two is fine, but otherwise... meh. But I don't care for cauliflower all that much, and I love it roasted. And I didn't think I liked brussel sprouts either... until I tried them roasted. (Deep fried is also good.) So we roasted the bok choy, and it turned out pretty darn good. Good enough that even Joe ate his serving (though he qualified it with saying that he's still not a big fan). Good enough that I made some for myself the next day. Twice.

Roasted (or broiled) Baby Bok Choy
The leaves crisp up quickly, while the body of the bok choy retains its water and crunchiness.

Baby bok choy (The tiny ones that are around 4-5 inches long. Tammy found hers at a local Asian grocery store)
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Black pepper

Heat oven to 400-450 F, or you can use your broiler if you have a good hot one.

Halve the bok choy. Toss with a bit of olive oil (It doesn't take much!) and kosher salt and pepper to taste. Spread boy choy in single layer on cookie sheet. The oil should keep them from sticking to the pan, but you can use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat if you prefer.

Roast at a nice high temp 400-450-ish F until leaves are crispy and beginning to blacken. Watch them carefully or you'll end up with blackened bok choy! Alternatively, you can put them under a broiler. When I made the bok choy shown above, I used the broiler setting in our toaster oven rather than heat my large oven.

Variations: add some zested lemon or lemon juice, or perhaps a bit of mirin or sherry.

Zamaan Cafe — photo tour!

Happy (belated) New Year! I wish you all a 2011 filled with wonderful food.

Long time fans of Ali Hijazi's various restaurant endeavors mourned when he closed La Zamaan on State St., but Ali couldn't stay away from the restaurant business and now he's back with Zamaan Cafe at Plymouth Rd & Green.

Our January review, of course, is up at eCurrent (and you should go read it for descriptions etc.) but here is the full photo spread for your enjoyment.  As always, click on the photo to see a larger version.

Karnabeet — fried califlower dressed with tahini. Heavenly.

Hummus with Armenian sausage

Tabouli


Fried Kibi stuffed with ground lamb

Baba ghannouj — eggplant, tahini, and garlic.

Falafel

Mujaddara - pilaf of lentils and cracked wheat

Mabhmour - sautéed eggplant

Chicken Kabobs (these were surpisingly tender)

Kufta Harra — grilled ground beef and lamb, and Joe's absolute favorite entrée here.

Lamb chops rubbed with sumac

Selection of pastries

Frita Batidos — Quick Photo Tour

 

Last week, I went to Frita Batidos with some friends/co-workers for lunch. The space is casual, with white picnic tables and some bar-style seating at the window. The old Cafe du Jour space has been renovated from the tiny cozy lunch room into a contemporary casual white box. Really, it's quite casual, and really, quite white, and really, quite boxy (well, rectangle-y).

We must have hit a pause between rushes, because the tables were full but there were only two couples ahead of us. I was envisioning a line out the door given that we were going to this much-hyped restaurant in its opening week, so that was something of a relief. Though by the time we ordered and found some seating space, the line had quadrupled in size.

You place your order at the counter then find a space to sit if you're eating in. The servers will bring out your food and call your name a la Zingerman's Deli. Everything is a la carte. There's a nice selection of Cuban-style Fritas plus some other sandwiches like pulled pork, a selection of sides, and assorted drinks, including the batidos (shakes) that are half of the restaurants name-sake. 

I opted for the black bean frita and added a fried egg to it. Tasty, though I'm thinking that it could have used a touch of hot sauce or salsa to add some zing. (I should have investigated the sauces on the shelves at the end of each table.)

And my friend Barb had the pulled pork sandwich and a side of really delicious coconut-lime rice. I suspect the pulled pork is going to be the next sandwich I try there.

I'm still thinking about that rice, though perhaps not as much as I'm thinking about these garlicky plantains, being photographed by my friend the awesome photographer Tafari.

And because they are simply that tasty, here's a close up of those plantains. You can see that glistening garlic sauce...

We finished off our meal with some passion fruit batidos and Spanish hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was thick and deliciously sludgy, just like Spanish hot chocolate should be (order with a churro for the proper Spanish hot chocolate experience), and heavily flavored with cinnamon. And the passion fruit batido? Well, I think Tafari's expression describes how he felt about that batido.

 

 

I wish I had a chance to eat my grandma's cookies

Some of you probably recognize the brand of cookie in the picture. When I was a kid, they were one of my favorites, so when I saw them at the grocery store dressed up for the holidays in sparkly red I made an impulsive decision to buy a package. And you know what? I still like them.

Why was this one of my favorite cookies? It was one of the cookies that my grandmother frequently bought. She bought a lot of cookies. I ate a lot of cookies sitting in front of her television. Little did I know that my grandmother was, at one point, renown in her community for her cookie baking. Renowned! Famous! Envied for her cookies! She'd bake up a storm during the holidays and store the cookies in tins to be shared out later. My mom told stories about how she'd find where grandma had hidden the cookie tins and sneak cookies, and then later when grandma demanded to know who ate the cookies there would be all sorts of denials.

When the era of mass produced and factory food really took off, my grandma set aside her baking. She got her GED, went to work full time, had less time for all that time-consuming home labor that home baking and canning required. Factory cookies and processed foods saved her time and made life easier. She was done with all that. Well, that and her kids grew up and moved out, and when I came around as the first grandkid I guess she didn't feel like starting up again.

My mom gave me the recipes shortly before she died. I was hoping we'd have a chance to bake them together, but that was not to be.

I guess I'll just have pull out those recipes and make them myself. But, you know, I just really wish I had a chance to eat some of my grandma's cookies made by her own hands.

Mom's Beer Bread

I've been mentally writing this post for over a month. It started with "Today was (is) my mom's birthday." and went off from there. Yet, it never made it to the digital paper that is this blog. Now it's two days after Thanksgiving. (Yes, Mom, I made the cranberry relish and the pecan pie.)  It was common for us to celebrate birthdays weeks after the actual dates, so by that standard I'm actually only a little late.

Oct 25 was my mom's birthday. I came home from work with a bread craving. Well, I was really craving something to spread my grapefruit marmalade on. The fastest bread I could think of was beer bread, and since it was my mom's birthday, making her beer bread seemed an appropriate way to remember her. I must own about a half dozen copies of her beer bread recipe, either hand-written or typed up on index cards. I'm always stumbling across copies in various parts of my recipe collection, but of course that night it took me a good 15 minutes to find one: a hand-written copy written in almost an upside down fashion with the title at the bottom.

Making beer bread is as easy as making muffins. Actually, it's easier, since there's only one pan to fill instead of a dozen muffins! My mom always swore by a cheap can of beer, like Budweiser or Miller. I didn't have any, so I used what I thought might be the mildest ale we had in the house. A strong beer will definitely be noticed. 

Beer bread doesn't really go with grapefruit marmalade, but it's wonderful with butter and honey, especially when still warm.

Mary Jo's Beer Bread

3 C self rising flour (=3 C flour + 1.5 tsp salt + 4.5 tsp baking powder)
4 Tbs sugar
1 12oz can (or bottle) of beer
1 egg

Heat over to 350 F.  Grease a 9x5 bread pan. Sift or mix the self-rising flour and sugar. Whisk egg with a fork. Mix flour, egg, and beer. The batter is gooey, and it's easiest to mix with a wooden spoon or large whisk. Put into bread pan. Bake for approximately 50 minutes - until a toothpick comes out clean (crumbs excluded) in the center. Let cool a bit and un-mold.

Best enjoyed while still warm, but will last a few days and microwaves fine.

 

The Soup Challenge #1 - Red Lentil and Bulgur Soup with Chile-Mint Butter

My in-laws sent us an article with 15 Fall Vegetable Soups, all from past issues of Saveur magazine. I like soup. It's something I wish I cooked more often. These soups looked so delicious that I decided to do a soup a week. The first soup I had to make was their Red Lentil and Bulgur Soup with Chile-Mint Butter.

This soup is similar to the lentil soup that Asye serves up at her Turkish Cafe. Yeah. That soup. The soup that makes me swoon. (Do you have any idea how long it took me to figure out that the "other" ingredient was bulgar and not rice? No, you wouldn't, but it was an embarrassingly long time.) So of course when I saw this as one of the 15 featured soups it had to be the first one.

More importantly, I also had the ingredients on hand. Being impatient to get started, that meant I could cook it the very same night that I decided to embark on this challenge.

There are many lentil-bulgar soup recipes out there, all variations on a theme, and many of them quite good. But what takes this one to the next level is the chile-mint butter, made with Aleppo pepper. Three tasty ingredients in a delicious combination.  (It also helps to use good flavorful chicken broth.)

It's an easy soup, but it'll still take about an hour total to make. Maybe 5-10 minutes of prep time (depending on how fast you are with a knife), six minutes of attentive cooking, and another 45 minutes of simmering. The chile-mint butter can be during the last few minutes of cooking.

To the recipe... Saveur Magazine's Red Lentil and Bulgur Soup with Chile-Mint Butter

 

Tracklements presents Ann Arbor's Hottest New Food Talent - Oct 16, 6pm

You want to go. You need to go.

You want to eat pork buns and onigiri (rice balls) with Tracklements' Miso Mirin salmon and homemade pickles made by San Street's Ji Hye Kim and Kristen Hogue Jackson. (We've had those pork buns before, so trust us on this one.)

You want to see how Working Girl Eats is coming along on her Tex-Mex street food cart venture.

You need to try The Brinery's latest pickled goods. While sipping wine from Everyday Wines. Okay, maybe not wine and pickles at the same time. Though I guess it depends on the wine. And the pickles.

But you could alternate with something from Farrell Fruit.

And if that isn't enough, then you'll want to see what EAT catering is doing these days (you know, the people who used to do the food at Jefferson Market).

You want to go and tell us how it went, because we have a prior engagement that is going to keep us away from this fabulous event.

$5 gets you in the door to pot & box's beautiful space, which you want to see, if you haven't already — but only if you buy in advance. ($8 at the door — if there are any tickets left.) And then it's small plates of tasty tidbits available for $5.

And the proceeds all go to a good cause.

You know you want to.  Hell, we know we want to.  But we can't, so you're going to have all the fun.

What: Tracklements presents Ann Arbor's Hottest New Food Talent
When: Saturday, Oct 16, 6-8pm
Where: pot & box, 220 felch street #2, ann arbor
How to purchase tickets in advance: Contact Durham's Tracklements for more infomation at 734-930-6642

Carl's Outdoor Wood-fired Brick Oven - Picture Tour

Pizza cooked in Carl's outdoor brick oven.

Summer has faded to Fall and, though I haven't written much about them, I've had many amazing food experiences in the past few months. Not least among them was a summer get-together at a family friend's place where he made fantastic pizzas for us in his hand-built outdoor brick oven.

Hiding inside this square-ish exterior structure is a domed oven. The fire is built off to one side, and the pizzas bake on the heated floor. The baker uses the pizza peel (that flat shovel-like thing) to turn the pizza around to allow different sides of the crust to be exposed to the fire.

As you can see above, the oven was verging on too hot, which resulted in some blackening, but the pizzas were fantastic all the same. Carl set up a veritable buffet of ingredients, and we chose our own combinations and watched him put it together. These ovens hold their heat a really really long time. You can start your oven on one day and it'll still be hot enough to bake bread the next day. In fact, the temp will have finally cooled off enough for bread.  (Pastries definitely need a cooler temperature, as I demonstrate below.)

A pizza on the peel waiting to go into the oven...

 

Carl sliding the pizza into the oven...

 

Two pizzas baking...

Carl dressing up a fig and prosciutto pizza...

I couldn't resist all this baking going on and just had to put something into that oven, so Carl and his family graciously aided me in making one of my apple-bacon galettes.  Photos behind the cut...

Buttermilk Cornmeal Mush

The first time I said to Joe that I was going to make cornmeal mush, he raised an eyebrow and said, "Isn't that a Depression-era dish?"

I didn't know about that. Fried cornmeal mush was simply something I grew up eating. But I guess it makes sense. If you have some cornmeal, hot water, salt, a bit of flour, and a bit of grease to fry it in (bacon fat, butter, or oil), then you have cornmeal mush. Simple and inexpensive ingredients.

A few days back I realized that I needed to use up my buttermilk before it went bad, and I had also run out of cornmeal. Those two thoughts collided, and the result was this experiment.

If basic cornmeal mush was made with water, why couldn't a richer variant be made out of milk or buttermilk?  As it turns out, there's not reason why not.

The basic cornmeal mush proportion is approximately 4:1 ratio of water to cornmeal. When I added buttermilk, I started with the basic Betty Crocker recipe and substituted buttermilk for only a portion of the water. The result is a dense slab of cornmeal mush with the decidedly sour tang of buttermilk. You don't have to use buttermilk. You can use regular milk instead, or even all water.

Buttermilk Cornmeal Mush
Note: require refrigeration for ~12 hours, so prep the night before you want it.

3/4 C cornmeal (fine grind preferred)
3/4 C buttermilk
2 1/2 C boiling water
3/4 tsp. salt
flour

butter/oil/bacon fat for cooking (I usually use a mix of butter and vegetable oil)

Set some water to boil. A teapot works great for this. Mix the cornmeal and buttermilk in a pot large enough accommodate it all (2 quarts-ish). Whisk in 2.5 cups boiling water and the salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until it thickens and begins to boil (bit bubbles will come up through the mush). Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes. Grease a loaf pan.  Stir the thickened mush and pour into the loaf pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 12 hours.

You can unmold the entire loaf of mush or carefully cut slices of the pan. You can cut thick slices or thin ones, depending your preference. Thick slices will have soft centers, and if you use buttermilk, its sour tang will be more noticeable. Thin slices will be crunchier.

Dredge the slices in flour. Pan fry in a bit of butter, oil, or bacon fat until crispy. Carefully turn and cook on the other side.

Serve with butter (if you like) and maple syrup.