Oranges are weird

At least they are if you're a passion fruit.

The Fonio Files

As of late, I've become obsessed with finding fonio. Fonio is a grain native to West Africa - in fact it is considered the oldest African domesticate. And people have liked the taste for thousands of years. But outside of West Africa, nobody has really heard of it.

My curiosity about this exceptionally nutritious crop started one Sunday during an episode of The Splendid Table. During one segment, host Lynne Rossetto Kasper interviewed Senegalese-American chef Pierre Thiam about the cuisine of Senegal, his Brooklyn, NY, restaurant Le Grand Dakar, and his new cookbook Yolele! Recipes From the Heart of Senegal. During the interview, they discuss the African miracle grain fonio, which Thiam tells Rossetto Kasper is almost impossible to ruin. It can be cooked somewhat like couscous. It can also be cooked in the microwave. But I was able to ruin my first batch, and after I did so (creating, in essence, a very lovely fonio hockey puck), I decided to find an actual recipe.

In honor of Vancouver 2010, the durable yet tasty fonio hockey puck.

Thiam includes a recipe for sesame fonio in his cookbook. Fortunately, it was sitting right there on the Splendid Table website. Even better, I had all the ingredients (or similar ones).

For sesame fonio (complete recipe is here), you need to stir fry 1/2 cup of black sesame seeds in a few teaspoons of peanut (or in my case, olive) oil.

Taken with the "Food" setting on my new camera. Looks a little like hot asphalt, doesn't it?

To 3 cups of salted boiling water, add the sesame seeds along with a cup of fonio. Reduce the heat - and I mean way down, otherwise you'll have sputtering fonio bubbling up in your face. I found it helpful to stir the whole thing. After a few minutes, it will absorb the water. Make sure you remove it from the heat and fluff it up.


The fonio has a pleasant, slightly nutty flavor, which the sesame complements well. I also found that the fonio absorbed some of the black sesame color, making it look like a big grayish blob with little black specks inside it. But the taste was quite pleasing, a little different from other grains I have eaten, in a good way. I also discovered through experimentation that fonio tastes quite good with soy sauce.

Sesame fonio, plated with stir fried baby lettuce and Nigerian-style deer stew

Now here's the difficult part: how does one find fonio in Baltimore? It's easy if you know where to look. You can only find it in African and African-Caribbean markets. Whole Foods doesn't carry it. Giant certainly doesn't carry it. Not even H-Mart carries it, and they have everything. Lucky for Baltimore, there are a few African markets in and around the city. I got mine from the Afro-Tropical Food Market across from the Senator, in Belvedere Square. I got 500 grams (1/2 a kilo, or about 1.1 lbs) of Deggeh brand fonio, imported from Mali via the Bronx, NY, for $4. The Splendid Table website also gives various mail order sources for fonio under the recipe for sesame fonio.

City Cafe isn't doing the 1/2 priced burgers anymore...

That's correct! I found this out last night when I went out for a burger. I still went ahead and ordered the burger anyway at full price. Of course, it still is a lovely burger. The complimentary focaccia was a nice new addition. It was extremely soft, unlike many I've had.

Instead of their 1/2 priced burgers, they now do $10 off a bottle of wine. Hopefully they'll keep that, but bring back the cheap burgers.

Pombe Ya N'Dizi, 3rd Straining

I am supposed to strain that Tanzanian banana wine four times. Did it the third time last week, about a week and a half too late (thanks again, Snowpocalypse 2010).


But it's now thrice-strained! I'll strain it again in three weeks, weather permitting.

Café Kabab

I was in Catonsville for a haircut the other day, and decided to stop in one of the nearby eateries for lunch. Sam's Bagels was a frequent stop of mine, but for some reason it was closed (at noon no less). Among the various other options was a fairly new place selling various types of kababs. The barber had never been to Café Kabab but he said one of his patrons recommended it.

My original intention was to just grab a menu. But the very sparsely decorated Café Kabab had an equally sparse menu. Apart from some beverages, pretty much all they do are kababs, all of which range from about $10 to $12. I ordered the kofta kabab (about $10), which came with complimentary rice, salad, cucumber sauce and flat bread and my choice of spinach or chickpeas (I went with the chickpeas).


There were mostly good things about this meal. I started nibbling the bread in the car. The bread was soft and hot, which may seem unremarkable except for the fact that the flat bread I get from kabab places is usually never hotter than lukewarm. My favorite part of the meal was the rice, which nicely absorbed the juices from the kofta. The chickpeas also had a nice velvety texture and I was sad to finish it so quickly.

The downside to the meal was the main attraction. Like a lead actor eclipsed by his co-stars, the kabab had some good points and some bad points. The extremely strong cumin flavor masked even the spiciness of the kabab. This did not detract from the kabab, because I liked this flavor a lot. What I didn't go for was the softness of the kabab. Kababs I have eaten in the past have usually been more or less firm. Maybe the restaurant (or its supplier) grinds the meat very fine. Maybe that's it, because the meat had an unsettlingly pasty consistency. When I put a piece of kabab inside my flat bread, it got flat almost in the way a lump of polenta might've gotten. I just found myself finishing everything else much faster and more eagerly. I didn't enjoy the kabab as much as I did the sides.

On a tangential note: Yes, I finally got a new camera! I replaced my long-dead Nikon Coolpix 4600 (the screen got crushed somehow) with the slimmer L20 model of the same brand. It must be popular, as it was the cheapest one at Office Depot and nobody in the area was carrying anything other than the floor model. So they let me buy the floor model.

Broadway comes to Sotto Sopra!

Passing this along from Dara at Dining Dish: a night of Richard Rodgers at Sotto Sopra, next Wednesday! The press release follows:

BROADWAY NIGHT
The Sweetest Sounds - The Music of Richard Rodgers
Wednesday, February 24th - 6:30 p.m.
Six Course Dinner & Performances
58 per person*
Make your reservations now - the snow is over!
410 625-0534



Please join us Wednesday, February 24th for our inaugural Broadway Night, a salute to America's iconic Broadway composer, Richard Rodgers. With over 900 songs to his credit and 43 Broadway shows we could do a whole year of his songs but we will start with this one evening, The Sweetest Sounds.



Our ensemble performers for the evening:

Mary Reilly is a Chicago native who currently lives in Howard County. She has been singing in choruses, choirs and solo performances most of her life. An active member of the DC Cabaret Network, her cabaret performances have included the DC Arts Club, the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, The Corner Store and The Warehouse in Washington and Davenport's in Chicago.

Lonny Smith originally from Brainerd, Minnesota, has lived in the Washington area for the last 8 years and is an active member of the DC Cabaret Network. As a cabaret artist, he has performed locally at Germano's, the Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, MetroStage, the DC Arts Club, and as part of the Washington Fringe Festival.



Katie Hale has played a wide variety of roles on stage, in film, and as a voiceover artist. A New Jersey native and Peabody Institute grad, Katie has appeared Off-Broadway and is an award-winning narrator whose clients include Hachette Audio (for whom she recently completed the Airport Mouse series of children's audiobooks), the Washington Post, the Discovery Channel, NASA and many more. You can read more about her at her website, http://www.katiehale.com/

James Fitzpatrick, our Music Director and Accompanist, has served as music director for Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, the Prince Theatre in Chestertown, and the Bay Theatre in Annapolis. He has accompanied major artists in a variety of venues locally and around the world.

While you enjoy Rodger's sweetest sounds we hope you will enjoy Chef Crouse's
own compositions for the evening.

MENU

1st course
Carrot and Ginger Soup

2nd course
Roasted Pear & Brie Salad
with chestnut honey vinaigrette

3rd course
Wild Mushroom Risotto with Grilled Scallop

4th course
Pink Champagne Sorbetto

5th course
Grilled Hanger Steak
with celeriac puree and tomato relish

6th course
Gianduja Pot du Crème

*Only 58 per person
(does not include beverages, tax & gratuity)

Let the sound of music fill your evening and Chef Crouse's wonderful Italian cuisine fill your soul. Please call 410 625 0534 with your reservations.
E-mail: ciao@sottosopra.us

China Fun

For the Chinese New Year (apparently it's also some sort of special day for valentines and whatnot), I made a stop at the unassuming China Fun, a small Chinese restaurant outside of Towson promising Hunan, Szechuan and Cantonese food. Some of their offerings fall in the dim sum category, though most are tried and true Chinese restaurant comfort foods (I did notice crispy shredded beef, which is more common in England than it is here). As I often do when I try out a Chinese-American restaurant for the first time, I went ahead and ordered that most "Chinese" (note the quotation marks) of dishes, orange chicken. Although it wasn't a weekday, they still let me order from the lunch combo menu, which also got me my choice of white, fried or pork fried rice for only $5.25. For an extra $1.25 I ordered a shrimp egg roll. After tax, the total was $7.

The wait for the orange chicken wasn't terribly long - just your average 10 minutes. I sat at one of two very spartan tables, waiting for my take out order in a room whose only non-utilitarian decoration was a massive painting of a group of people punting down a large tree- and rocky ledge-lined river. If this is a painting of China, it's a part we regrettably don't see much of in this country.

On the way home, I noticed the strong garlic scent - unusual for orange chicken. But I like garlic so this posed no problem. When I got home I tore into the meal. The chicken had to sit an extra half-hour after I talked to some neighbors about the crazy snow (one is from New England, the other from maritime Canada, and the amount of snow we got was even new to them). But the rice was soft and filling as I had expected, and the broccoli bright green and not too soft nor too crisp.


The chicken, though by no means crunchy anymore, was far from the gummy and overly chewy orange chicken you might find at a restaurant that truly doesn't know what it's doing. The chicken itself was unremarkable, but the goodies surrounding it were what demand attention. The outer coating was satisfyingly hard, and the sauce around the chicken was a wonderful mixture of sweet, tangy and garlicky. Though this is one of China Fun's spicier dishes, I did not find it spicy in the least bit, as I rarely do with orange chicken.

The shrimp egg roll was a nice combination of shrimp and cabbage flavors, with a crispy outer layer that didn't seem too greasy. I was hoping to save a little of the egg roll for the leftover orange chicken, but finished eating the egg roll before I could stop myself.

MORE Sonics heading to Maryland!

What a way to play catch-up, y'all.

Jessica posted at her Examiner page (H/T HowChow) that two more Sonics are planned for the Baltimore Metro area in addition to the one opening in Reiserstown by September. One will be in Ellicott City and a second Baltimore County location in Lansdowne (yes, that makes three total, in addition to the lonely little Sonic in Easton, Talbot County, over on the Eastern Shore). That last one is extremely convenient to me, as most of my immediate family lives in Lansdowne. So I will have ample opportunities to visit.

She also notes that other locations may be popping up in Anne Arundel and Carroll Counties, as well as additional spots in Howard and Baltimore Counties.

I feel almost like one of those Chick-Fil-Aniacs who get giddy whenever they hear about a new CFA opening up somewhere in North America. Though not as obsessive as they are, Sonic was a place I visited often when I went to Oklahoma a few years ago (they are everywhere there). You cannot tell how much I am looking forward to this.

I would like to ask the folks over at Sonic, as well as the various county executives, what the hell took them so damn long to get to Maryland anyway?

Next on my wish list: how about a Del Taco or two opening up around here? Or a Wagamama?

Dara dishes out FREE cooking advice for Snowpocalypse 2010!!!

Check it out here. I've had nothing useful to contribute, but hey I hopefully can at some point! Dara notes:

Okay you are stuck at home, hopefully you are a survivor of your neighborhood food store and you bought all these items but you might be missing an ingredient or haven’t a clue how to use them or want a new recipe. Reach out to me in the comment section OR via email at snomg@diningdish.otherinbox.com OR on Twitter @daracooks - I will get you answers.

Also contributing some advice: Mary at the Sweet Mary blog.

Get set for iced lattes, tater tots and fried pickles galore!

Anyone remember when I said that I sure wish we had Sonic around these parts?

Well, this from Liz (at What's to Eat Baltimore?), via Twitter:

Just found out that Baltimore County is getting a Sonic in Sept! (a guilty pleasure of mine.)

@BeerInBaltimore on liberty road in randallstown! :)

So no longer do I have to drive up to Amish country or (in lieu of that) down to Georgia for my Sonic Drive-In needs. Yippee!

Why you should always take scary food news with a grain of salt

The new report about soda increasing the risk of pancreatic cancer is getting some good play right now. Perhaps it's true. It suggests that soft drink drinkers have double the risk of developing pancreatic cancer as those who do not drink it. But they need a more rigorous study than this one. Many factors were not considered, in a fourteen year study - including high fat diet, consumption of diet soft drinks or fruit juices, family histories of pancreatic diseases, etc. But the sheer numbers of those who developed pancreatic cancer jumped out at me in particular (H/T Village Voice):

The study, as the Washington Post reports, is not without its weaknesses: The total number of pancreatic cancer diagnoses was only 140 (pancreatic cancer is a very rare type of cancer, but it also has a very low survival rate), and 18 of those diagnoses were made among people who drank two or more sodas per week. Twelve cases were diagnosed among people who drank less than two, while the vast majority -- 110 -- were among people who didn't drink any soda at all.

Do also read the Washington Post article as well. It elaborates further.

Not to mention the fact that I know soda isn't the healthiest thing to drink, and I know that pancreatic cancer is a very sad and tragic disease. But these mitigating factors at least should have been considered. As it stands, I probably won't be scared by this study. But it's still a good thing to cut back anyway.

Excuses, Excuses

I've seen so many of my fellow foodies hunerking and bunkering down in the midst of the SNOWPOCALYPSE OF 2010, baking and cooking furiously. Even my sister has done so, telling me about this luscious pumpkin bread she made the other day (I would've gone to her house but I really can't get down the street).

I myself have not baked anything. It seems like a lame excuse, but I'm not in the comfort of my own place. I'm in my parents' house, wondering when I will ever see the insides of my apartment again. My landlord tells me that my street has not seen a plow at all (we're not even a secondary road - more like a tertiary or even a quaternary one). All my thoughts are on my wok, my bamboo steamer, my bread maker and my pasta maker (which I would've been using profusely by now). I have scary thoughts that the contents of my fridge will start looking like an episode of Life After People. I'd much rather bake in the comfort of my own kitchen. God love 'em, but my parents' kitchen is not the most organized room in the house. This explains where I get it from.

An even worse excuse, however, is that I've been getting used to having cable again, since all I have at home is super-limited basic cable. Among that, re-loading all the data on my recently fixed laptop*, digging out the walk and editing Power Point presentations that wait patiently to be presented to college students (all classes canceled so far, not that I could even make it there anyway), I really haven't gotten around to baking anything. Hopefully I will at some point. At the rate things are going, Maryland will be buried under ten feet of snow so I may be stuck here for a very, very long time.

* And please don't listen to all those consumer advocates who tell people that buying the extended warranty is the biggest mistake you can make. The ones I bought for my laptop and my GPS have helped me immensely. Otherwise I'd have to have put out another $500 for another laptop or $200 for another GPS. They've saved me a lot of aggravation. Also, please don't ever buy a Dell laptop for yourself. They're unreliable. I should know.

Cabin Fever

A few things I've noticed while trapped in my parents' house in the throes of the Snowpocalypse of 2010:

• It's not that difficult to kind of recreate Jell-O 1-2-3, that fabulously foamy Jell-O confection from somewhere in the 80's: take any Jell-O mix and boiling water, blend it in a blender on medium for 30 seconds, then high for a minute. Then add ice water and blend on high for a minute. Refrigerate as normal. It'll solidify into two layers: the regular Jello-O layer and a foamy layer on top. Sure, it's only more of a Jello 1-3, without the middle #2 layer. But it's still different.
  

• My cat will eat peanuts.

• A piece of bacon wrapped around a hot dog - "Tijuana-style" but without the maters and onions - is blissful after 20 minutes in the toaster oven, on the "Broil" setting. Normally it would shrivel up and get all hard after spending that long in the toaster oven, but the bacon prevents that by lubricating it.

• Caught an Ace of Cakes marathon. The Duffster made that Old Bay cake for the 70th anniversary of Old Bay. Wish I had gone to that.

• Which reminds me: I need to get back to Dizzy Izzies at some point.
  

• I have orange chicken and milk sitting in my fridge at home that probably won't be any good by the time I finally get home. And my banana wine needed to be strained on Sunday.

• I would have gone out for a beer but every parking space is snowed in. And we're getting 10 to 20 more inches of snow. Things are looking quite Antarctic right about now.

Any snowpocalypse stories y'all want to share? Please go ahead!

Baltimore Restaurant Week: The Capital Grille

The Capital Grille is one of those restaurants I've never really bothered to visit. It always looked so expensive, so I never went in. And, well, yeah - it is expensive. Even at lunch. So when I called a friend of mine to suggest we do lunch for Restaurant Week, he suggested a place that was normally expensive. That way, we'd be getting a really good bargain. So Scott mentioned The Capital Grille and I figured it was time.

The Capital Grille is a national steakhouse chain - a very posh chain (that is: this ain't Sizzler). This much I knew, though I had few other expectations, except the hopes for a good lunch. Scott has eaten here before and has raved about it. One recommendation: the steak sandwich, which runs $18 - almost as much as the entire Baltimore Restaurant Week lunch menu. Not one for $20 sandwiches, I insisted on the Restaurant Week menu.

Scott and I were led through the rich wood-grained interior, past bright plate glass windows and massive portraits of famous Marylanders (NB: I had not known that famous Civil War figure Clara Barton was a Marylander, but the Massachusetts native spent the last 15 years of her life in Glen Echo). We were brought to a cozy table with a crisp white tablecloth, where we talked about family, friends and finances over freshly baked bread and butter. I ordered an iced tea (about $3) and Scott got a cocktail. I don't drink many cocktails, so I admit the $10 price tag on that one surprised me a bit.

Like most Restaurant Week spots, the Capital Grille offered a soup-or-salad course, an entrée and a dessert. Since we were in such a classy place, I didn't ask to try anything that Scott had.

I really need a new camera.

Scott got the clam chowder, which he seemed to really enjoy. I got the Capital Grille Garden Salad: a mixture of field greens and tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette with chunks of bleu cheese. I have grown tired of bleu cheese, so imagine my delight when I tried this cheese. It was perhaps the best bleu cheese I have eaten in several years: tangy and sharp but not too sharp ("wince-worthy" is the word I'm looking for). This bleu cheese was just mellow and even buttery enough to make me really savor it.


Each of us ordered the 8 oz. filet mignon with mashed potatoes for our main course. I ordered my filet mignon rare, and I got rare. Soft, tender and rare. I couldn't exactly cut it with my fork, but I was able to make a rather permanent dent with it. The filet mignon was beautifully juicy with a flavor that reminded me what quality beef is supposed to taste like. I also found out that day that 8 oz. of meat is a bit too much for me to handle all at once. And if that wasn't enough, Scott railed me about the meat selection at Fogo de Chão, the Brazilian churrascaria restaurant next door. So much meat as much of your meal is served on a skewer. And there is no vegetarian or seafood option. It's all meat. At least they have a wide selection of that. Fogo de Chão ain't cheap neither.

I have to rave about the potatoes. Rarely does a side dish stand up to a main entrée and not make a scene. No prima donna is this bowl of mashed potatoes. These were thick, buttery and moist. No lumps, which I often like a little bit of in my mashed potatoes. If I could just go to The Capital Grille and order the potatoes, I would in fact do that. They were a beautiful accompaniment to the filet mignon but also notable in and of themselves.


I liked my dessert, the chocolate espresso cake. But as good as it was, I can easily say it was not the highlight of my lunch. But something has to take that mantle, and the espresso cake is it. Thick, chocolaty and moist, it was SO dense that I truly had trouble finishing it at all. It was tasty, please don't misunderstand me. But it was the least memorable of my three dishes. This says more about how good the salad was and less about the cake, since I am not a salad person.

So for about $20 for me (before tea, tax and generous tip), I had a remarkably delicious and inexpensive lunch at one of the loveliest "business lunch" places in town - with, I might add, excellent service (kudos to our waiter and the staff). But with the generous amount of meat I got at The Capital Grille, could my system really tolerate a possible trip to Fogo de Chão?

Europe's Alcohol Belts

This comes from Strangemaps via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish at the Atlantic. I love maps, especially food-related ones. To wit:


The "Wine Belt" is in red (burgundy?), the "Beer Belt" is in a sort of golden color, and the "Vodka Belt" is in blue.

Conan. Cheetos. Art.

Now if they only had some Old Bay to go along with it.



From Eclectic Asylum Art.

Owin fixin' ta not gao aout inna snaow

This is not addressed to anyone in particular, but y'all will understand the sentiment:

People, when a major snowstorm hits, why do you go and flood all the supermarkets with your presence? Seriously nobody needs THAT much toilet paper, bread or milk over a three day period.  Honestly, just whisper the word "snowstorm" around these parts and people act like they're hunkering down for Y2K.  It's not the end of the world, people.

Baltimore Restaurant Week: Sascha's 527

My sister and I were lucky enough to just miss the mammoth snow this weekend (forecaster FAIL anyone?) by going out to Sascha's 527 for Restaurant Week on Friday night. It's a restaurant whose samples we enjoyed at the Great Tastes Expo a few years ago, and we had been meaning to get there and sit down for a proper meal. Fortunate enough to find a spot in front of the Walter's, we trekked on over to Sascha's for our 8:30 PM reservation.

Only we didn't have a reservation. I'm not sure if that was a mix-up on the part of Open Table or Sascha's, but it didn't take too long for them to get a table ready for us. This was in spite of the fact that this trendy yet lush, spacious yet cozy restaurant was jammed for the evening.

With its columns, chandelier and massively high ceiling, Sascha's is imposing in terms of space. Its red and brown tones are actually kind of soothing, given the commotion of all the diners - such as the occasionally obnoxious woman laughing as loud as humanly possible (dontcha just love that?).

Sascha's offers an extra perk for Restaurant Week: a complementary glass of house wine. We each ordered the white and anticipated our three-course meal.

For the first course, Cathy got the shrimp and grits.


She loved the flavor. I found the grits nice and mellow, but a wee bit, well, gritty. They were still my favorite part of the dish. I do like shrimp, but be prepared for a very strong shrimp flavor. I mean very strong. Make of that what you will.


My first course was their bison sliders. I loved these moist little burgers. Even more than those, however, I couldn't rave enough about their special Moroccan barbeque sauce they provided with the sliders. It had a nice tamarind flavor. The sauce made the burgers taste even better. It might have also made the house-made chips that came with the burger somewhat more edible. These chips were very inconsistent: some tasted bland, others tasted burnt. It’s definitely not a plus for the meal.


The second course was less satisfying for Cathy. Her free-range chicken with butternut gnocchi had some definite highlights – specifically the gnocchi, perhaps the best thing about either her or my second course. The chicken we found to be dry in some places. Despite its pleasant flavor, my little piece of it was dry enough that it didn’t leave me wanting for more. My seared ahi tuna with saffron noodles was much better. Also medium rare, the tuna was juicy, tender and moist – everything I had hoped the tuna would be, and everything we wish the chicken would have been. The saffron noodles were not life-changing, but still more than satisfied me.


For our final course, we went to old dessert stand-bys. Many restaurants seem to offer some variation of chocolate cake and some variation of crème brulee as part of their Restaurant Week dessert course. I enjoyed the crème brulee – a simple one, unadorned with fruit. It had a mellower flavor than most I have eaten. We couldn’t say the same for the chocolate mousse cake, which was unspeakably rich. I don’t know Cathy finished it. I know I couldn’t have.

We left with an overall above-average experience. I found my dishes to be better than those my sister got. My favorite dish was clearly the bison slider plate with Moroccan barbeque sauce, though again, I could have easily done without those chips.