Sampling Doc April's Delicious Dishes

In July I went on a whirlwind weekend visit to Arlington, Virginia/DC to celebrate Rachel's birthday and engagement. While I can never see everyone when I return I try to maximize my time. This trip managed to fit in watching the first two episodes Mad Men Season 1 (Matthew - hurry up and finish so I can borrow them!), Rocket Bar, wine tasting, the pool and the culinary highlight - tasting some of Doc April's Delicious Dishes.

I hadn't seen April since meeting her at our mutual very good friend Vika's Bahamian wedding celebration last year. I was excited to see her again and experience her adventurous cooking firsthand as she's a daredevil in the kitchen always improvising and creating something new. My big request was that we make spaetzle as I fell in love with it at B Bar and knew she had experience. I was shocked by its simplicity and hopefully will make its slightly salty dough goodness again soon.

In addition to parsley-tinged spaetzle, she concocted a wonderful barbeque sauce that her boyfriend Mike used on a slow cooked brisket and used his beef drippings to make another sauce based on Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon. Oh and there was perfectly caramelized grilled corn, which always hits the spot for me, followed by a simple satisfying dessert of fresh cherries and amaretto. The flavorful meal was an excellent end to an exciting weekend.

Many thanks to her, Mike, Rachel, Peter and Laura for hosting me over the weekend. May our paths cross again sooner rather than later. Same goes for the new friends that were made!

Matt, Laura, Peter and Rachel

From 2010_07_24

Guiness Floats

This month I promised myself I wouldn't eat out or eat meat other than seafood. I knew it would be a challenge not to eat out but it is much harder than expected. I hadn't thought about how I planned to define eating out... Is it simply buying pre-made food elsewhere? Or does it include rejecting food other people buy and give to me? It probably should exclude things like the mediocre pizza I had a work meeting but I have trouble declining free anything and the pizza would have been thrown out. The meat thing really isn't so bad though, especially since I'm still eating seafood and I'm not a die hard carnivore in the first place.

Last night Meg improvised a dinner for us. She's a whiz in the kitchen, who cooks intuitively. As a recipe lover this impresses me to no end. She deboned then cooked Chilean Sea Bass with Sesame Oil, Soy Sauce, Marsala Wine, Garlic, Ginger and a decorative Lemon slice over a bed of Spinach in a foil pouch. Once done she had this amazing flaky fish and a silky, Asian-Italian fusion sauce I took far too many slices of baguette to sop up. Since the whole thing cooked a mere 15 minutes the ginger and garlic retained a lot of their bite, which is rare and enjoyable.

My job was dessert. I thought about making 6 different things and then realized I should reign in the dessert making. After all I did eat that Tiramisu basically by myself. To keep things simple I opted to take Meg's suggestion and bring the ingredients for Guinness Floats, which as you can imagine involve Vanilla Ice Cream and Guinness. I like both ingredients separately and the rich, slightly bitter coffee-like flavor of Guinness goes well with the sweetness of ice cream. Given my sweet tooth though I kept wanting to increase the ice cream into a milkshake proportion. Strange as I like Guinness on its own...I guess once I meet sweet I find it irresistible and want more.

Paella and Irish Carbomb Cupcakes

In an ultimately successful campaign to sell me on a September Spain trip, Leslie had her friend Kristin and me over to view Vicky Cristina Barcelona and to eat delicious Paella with Chicken and Sausage. It was rich and filling; I especially loved the fresh taste of the parsley which broke up the tomato flavor and color.

My contribution were these politically incorrect, delicious Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes. Frankly it has been so long since I made them that I don't remember my impression beyond finding them amazing and a bit time consuming to make. I want to say the cupcakes were moist, rich and dense. But who knows? I guess I'll have to revisit the recipe and drink more leftover Guinness. Damn! Life is hard...

Yes, this recipe taught me that I can drink beer and it really isn't so bad. I still don't go out of my way to consume beer but the 6 year "allergy" has ended.