Random Bites: Tax Day Edition

Tax season bites. Looks like I withheld too little last year because I owed for the first time ever. Wow. I also made more in all of my part time work than I realized, which is great - though it did push me into a higher tax bracket. I'm not complaining about being taxed per se. I'm just kicking myself for not having changed my W4's sooner. Now I'm withholding nothing. Hopefully I'll get something back next year?

Just a few more bites as I recover from tax season.

1. The drive to cut back on my soda consumption has taken a slightly bumpy road, but I'm still on it. I now drink, on average, about two cans of soda a day. That said, I have gotten much more used to using that press-n-seal wrap on the half-empty can and putting it back in the fridge. I've also been a little generous in my definition of what counts as "soda". I haven't been counting it if it's normally caffeine-free, like ginger ale, or "all-natural", like one of those sugary sodas you might find in some of the more upscale natural food stores. The iced tea I keep brewing (thank you, Luzianne) has definitely cut down my soda consumption, that much is certain.

2. About those "upscale natural food stores": I don't have the cash to do all, or even much, of my shopping at places like the Good Life Organic Market in Severna Park or David's Natural Market in Columbia. I do love roaming around them to see the merchandise and hopefully pick up one or two things without breaking the bank. Good Life has hot soups (a small Senegalese Peanut Soup will cost $4), chocolates that I cannot avoid (a quarter pound for about $4.50) and more of those natural sodas. They also sell eggs individually - 35¢ per egg. David's is also a lovely store, and I have become addicted to the individually wrapped Dan's Chocolates that are conveniently located right by the checkout (50¢ each).

3. The Haute Dog Carte has a second location! It's at the Colonnade at Hopkins.

4. Speaking of businesses in Mt. Warshnin', Bansky's is just awesome, a beautiful group of people with awesome food.

5. I'm trying to find some huckleberries in the area! This is for an upcoming Snacking State-by-State post about food from Idaho. Rachel (Coconut & Lime) gave me the head's up that Atwater's at Belvedere Square sometimes sells huckleberry jam, but they have none at the moment. Will probably need to break down and mail order it online, like I almost did with poi for my upcoming Hawaii post.

6. If you didn't know this already: RuPaul's Drag Race (one of my guilty gay pleasures) is on every Monday night at The Hippo. Now I don't have to wait until it's posted online the next day!

The Cheesiest Contest for Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month

From Dara Bunjon at the Baltimore Examiner and Dining Dish: if you make the best damn grilled cheese sandwich, she has the perfect contest for you: a Grilled Cheese Sandwich cooking contest at the Mount Washington Tavern! One of the categories is for the home chef. Get your recipes in by April 1 for the chance to compete with two other home chefs, in front of a lucky celebrity panel, on April 10 from 2 to 4. From the Tavern's website:

Now is your chance to prove that you have the very best grilled cheese sandwich in Baltimore. Enter our home cooks’ Grilled Cheese Sandwich Cook-Off competition. Those interested can submit their original grilled cheese sandwich recipe for the chance to “cook-off” on Sunday, April 10 as the Tavern hosts their 1st Annual Grilled Cheese Cook-Off competition for the professionals and the home cook!

So if you have a very special grilled cheese to show off to grilled cheese lovers all around town, this is the perfect chance to do it!

Haute Dog Carte for a frigid day

The Haute Dog Carte is still out daily, folks. It hasn't stopped operations yet, though I think they are scaling back during the snowy months. So make sure you get a knockwurst in beer butter sauerkraut or their tasty Filipino Maharlika dog - unless you just want the classic 1/2 pound all-beef Angus (none more than $5). Just do it. You will be happy you did.

Haute Dog Carte

I have to hand it to the folks running the Haute Dog Carte, conveniently located near the corner of Lake and Falls next to Bonjour Bakery. They have a good business going. How so? Let me note the ways:

• Their onion and tomato jam (it's better than ketchup) may make you swear off eating mustard on your hot dogs ever again - unless you taste their Dijon mustard.
• Their different-each-week Binkert's Dog ($4), and their different-each-week Chef's Dog ($5) - today was a Filipino frank called the Maharlika. I got their Dijon in my bun but they were right: I didn't need it.
  
• Oh, these buns are soft and hollowed out, not open-faced at all like a typical hot dog bun.
• And the way they warm those buns - which leads to some, ahem, startling comments from some otherwise unassuming blue haired little old ladies...
  
• Their Signature Dog ($4.50) is a 1/2 pound Angus dog. I haven't had it but it sounds good.
• Even if you just get the regular $2 dog, you have a variety of toppings to put on it. I'd still recommend the Dijon or (even better) the onion-tomato jam. But there are a few toppings.

Since Dara's story on them, the Haute Dog Carte seems to have gone to seven days a week. This is lucky for the hot dog-lovin' public. Lake and Falls, right across from the Royal Farms. You can't miss it.

Potatoes and Peas Vindaloo

I don't think Julie Sahni's Moghul Microwave gets the accolades it is due. It introduced me to the joys of South Asian eatin' years ago, when I was still a young kitchen experimenter - by letting me know that the microwave was just another kitchen appliance, not merely something for heating frozen dinners. One of the first recipes I ever made out of this wonderful cookbook was Sahni's potatoes and peas vindaloo.

First, you need to make one recipe of vindaloo sauce, which (as she points out) is great on hot dogs. After grinding the spices, you nuke onions, garlic and ginger in olive or mustard oil the microwave, then add the ground spices and finally a mixture of water, tamarind paste, kosher salt and tomato purée. I prefer the tubed tomato paste, which gives a much, much stronger tomato flavor. I tried puréeing fresh tomatoes, bought from a farm no less, and the flavor just wasn't that strong for me. So this is one of the few times I would actually recommend using something from a tube instead of something fresh.

This vindaloo sauce can survive for a year in the freezer. Just put it in ice cube trays, then microwave or pan-heat it up if you want to use it. I do this with pesto as well.

Once you have this done, nuke some small potatoes (yes, these I got at a farmer's market, and they do in fact taste better than the ones in the store), with a little salt, a little water and a little olive oil. Next, dump some peas and the vindaloo sauce in with the potatoes, nuke it some more and you are done.

It goes great with basmati rice, which I cooked in the breadmaker with turmeric, butter and craisins mixed in. To flesh out the meal, I stir-fried some broccoli and carrots in more butter and turmeric. I'm hoping to use both the butter and the turmeric more often. I finished it off with some garlic naan and some meat samosas I got at the Kabab Stop in Mount Washington. Good place, but make sure you bring cash if you don't plan to spend more than $10.

Sushi Hana, Thai Arroy, Indiclub Triple Play

I haven't eaten out much this past week, which is saving me tons o' money (yay)! Some thoughts on the few places I have eaten at over the past week.

Sushi Hana

I didn't think I could eat anymore after the Great Tastes Show, but Cathy and I thought we could squeeze in a little sushi at the Sushi Hana last weekend - she wanted to do her taxes after the show, and I had TurboTax on my computer. We were hungry afterwards and Sushi Hana was close.

We got more than we thought we would, especially since Cathy was convinced to order a second roll (against my urging - you can't really bag this stuff, can you?). It was Sushi Hana's "I Like It Roll" - sliced and wrapped in seaweed, with fake crab and avocado, tempura-fried, and topped with crab. It was tasty but I had to take mine home. At least it was cooked. The other one, whose name I forget, was pretty good too, covered in raw tuna and black fish eggs.

This is that last roll.

Of course, the tempura ice cream was a requirement. It's perhaps my favorite dessert, period. The fizzy marble water I got with it was interesting. You have to go through all this trouble to push a marble into a bottle of soda and then it gets fizzy. Don't ask.

Grand total for everything: damn, I don't remember. Each roll was about $10 and the sashimi appetizer was about $7.

Thai Arroy

Cool Thai art greets you at the door.

My friends Eric and Alan are surprised I have kept with this blog, which I told them about a while ago Most bloggers give up the enterprise in less than a year; the fact that I've stuck with it as long as I have bodes well for the BS.

Hey, my acronym is BS! That only just hit me :|

So Thai Arroy: Very crowded place in Federal Hill. But Eric sent the rest of us to reserve a table while he found a place from which he wouldn't get towed. Looks as if Thai Arroy is frequently among Baltimore's Best, and it shows in the food. Some of what I enjoyed:

• Some spring rolls with a really good peanut sauce - actually the peanut sauce was the part I was impressed with. The roll was standard. Tasty, but like many I have had at Thai and Vietnamese spots before.
• My tom kha kai soup. It's difficult to do tom kha soup wrong. I say this because I have rarely had a bad one. This one also pleased. Consistent and delicious.
• My main course, the pa nang kai (pa nang chicken), more coconutty goodness, with chicken, carrot and green beans. I don't like green beans because they usually taste too fresh. I know this sounds strange, but it's almost as if they are undercooked, and I just don't enjoy them. Not these - these were good. I had plenty left over for dinner in the week.
  

Indiclub

Could someone tell me why the hell parents would allow four children to go running, screaming, fighting with butter knives, stopping at other diners' tables and almost running underneath the waiter's legs to go unchecked while they just chit chat and wait for their food. My God, they even thought it was cute!

Apparently there was little that Indiclub could do (would do?) to stop them. It was a table of twelve adults who obviously didn't notice this bullshit. And I can ignore most stuff that happens out when I'm eating - crying babies, arguing diners, even someone getting sick. But twenty minutes of this squealing, yelling, playground behavior and my sister saw me transform into Mr. Restaurant Rage. Fortunately, I kept it to the table, but I had to say something to the waiter, who apologized and said he had asked them to stop. And it didn't really stop until the waiter talked to them after I mentioned something to him. We thought we were in the Twilight Zone for a while, since we seemed to be the only people who were bothered about this. Until a gentleman behind us mentioned with to a fellow diner, not long before he left, "It is too much noisy in here." HA! Thank you!

But DAMN! Parents, either force your children to stay at the table, find a babysitter or take them to Cheeburger Cheeburger where they're allowed to act like maniacs.

Ahem.

Aside from that, the food, which I've talked about before, was pretty good. My favorite part of the meal was the crab masala (about $7), which was new, creative and very tasty. That appetizer went too fast. My achaar gosht ($13), or lamb in pickling spices (I love Indian pickle - pungent), was not quite the same I used to get at Indian Delite in Catonsville, which has since stopped serving it. It was part bitter, part salty, and quite hot. I probably wouldn't order it again, but I will definitely finish what I did get. The kulfi ice cream was so dense and delicious, very cardamom-my. Very satisfying, despite the kinderexplosion at the other end of the restaurant.

IndiClub (Indian / South Indian / Pakistani) - 1660 Whitehead Ct., Woodlawn, MD 21207; Phone: (410) 594-9600

Sushi Hana (Japanese) - 6080 Falls Rd., Lake Falls Village, Baltimore, MD 21209; Phone: (410) 377-4228



Thai Arroy (Thai) - 1019 Light St., Baltimore, MD 21230; Phone: (41) 385-8587

The Fresh Market

I took a shortcut home via Exit 22 (nope, not reporting on it yet), and ran across this place called The Fresh Market. This chain covers just about every state below the Mason-Dixon Line (sans West Virginia), as well as Pennsylvania and the Great Lakes. It looks like what would happen if Whole Foods and Trader Joe's had a love child and then moved to a more upscale neighborhood. And the prices match. Just about everything is more expensive there. I found myself muttering, "Damn, Whole Foods is actually cheaper than this place!" But WF also looks more trailer trashy after setting foot in TFM.

So imagine my surprise when I find that the one thing that is cheaper than most other places would have it is their ready-to-eat sushi. I picked up a smoked salmon Philly roll covered in tiny red fish eggs for $5.50. Of course, when I looked at the ingredients to see what kind of fish laid those eggs, all my eyes noticed was "high fructose corn syrup" nestled in with the rest of the ingredients (bleeeah). So much for sushi being healthy.

It was probably still healthier than the little petit four I got of the little white chocolate snowman in seated position, for $1.50.

Crêpe du Jour

Liberté, égalité, fraternité, ou la mort! It's Bastille Day, y'all! At least it was yesterday anyway. And I set my sights on French food. One problem: most French restaurants are scarily expensive, so my sights were set more on a crêperie. And I know of a few good ones in the city. There's Sofi's Crepes, right on the other side of the Charles from Tapas Teatro. Also coming to mind is Mount Washington's Crêpe du Jour. There are probably others, but these are the only two I know of. I wanted more of a sit-down thing - Sofi's offers only a handful of tables - so I went to Mount Washington.

I had in the back of my mind one worrisome thought - a three-peat of my St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo dining experiences. Both fell on a Saturday this year. I wanted Irish food on March 17, but could I get in? Nope, couldn't get in. I wanted Mexican food on May 5, but could I get in? Again, no. So I was half-prepared to not get in for July 14's Bastille Day celebrations either. Luckily for me, most Americans don't know much about French holidays (myself included), so the place wasn't standing room only. It was very busy, but there were a few tables up front still available, and several on the sidewalk. Apparently the entire back of the restaurant was totally crowded, and reserved for the duration of the night. And strangely, a friend and former co-worker was seated in the restaurant with a friend of his. We had bumped into each other a few weeks before, after not having seen each other for the better part of a year. Small world! I'd go into more detail about other people I ran into tonight that know people I know whom I had no idea they knew, but I'd give myself a headache.

Crêpe du Jour offers a breathtaking array of crêpes as well as other French foods. This would have me scratching my head for most of my meal as to what to order next. Fortunately for me, Crêpe du Jour offered a handy Bastille Day prix fixe menu! For $25 - $30 with a glass of wine, white or red - you get a three-course meal that would easily cost $40 otherwise. Normally I would eye the cheapest crêpe on the menu and maybe have dessert and wine or beer. But this really helped me get a good perspective on a full-blown French meal, and it was a pretty good deal. And I had to make less of a decision!

As I sipped on my Chardonnay, I got my first course, a choice of fromage or escargot. Being adventurous, and not in a cheese mood, I went with the snails (normally $9). They were served up in a wonderful sauce with chopped tomato, garlic and slices of crusty bread. Strange, but my very first bite or two were vaguely reminiscent of the flavor of braunschweiger! That's not so bad, I mean I like braunschweiger. But the snails were tasty. Never imagined eating snails before? Try it at least once.

My second choice was between two entrée crêpes. I forget what the second one was, a chicken and mushroom crêpe. I went for the crêpe normande (usually $18), whose name, of course, I butchered in front of my host - I apologized, he said it was alright. This crêpe was a seafood crêpe with squid, shrimp, and a wonderful sauce. It was a very big, stuffed crêpe, and one of the best parts of it, despite the wonderful seafood and sauce, was the crêpe itself. A little sweet, but not in a dessert-y way, and very tasty.

My third course came in a while. I knew it wouldn't be like my friend's dessert, a large crêpe with ice cream, caramel and whipped cream on top. Instead it was a choice between the crêpe suzette (usually $9) and an icy fruit dessert. Yes, I went with the suzette. This was very hot coming out, with its caramel and orange sauce. It was heavenly. That's all I can say.

For this hefty French feast, I paid a total of $31.50 after tax, plus a $5 tip. Not bad for food that usually costs a lot more.

Chiyo Sushi

It hit me last night: sushi is probably one of my favorite foods. Which is bad if you consider how expensive it is. So I don't eat it TOO often. This hit me, mind you, at Chiyo Sushi, a sushi place I had eaten at while housesitting up in Mt. Washington a few months back. It's a small, easy-to-miss place in Mt. Washington Village, near an excellent French restaurant, a pretty good Middle Eastern one, and the Mt. Washington Tavern (no, I've not been in). It is cozy, as reviews have said, and bright and colorful. They also know a thing or two about presentation.

I actually didn't really like Chiyo the first time I went there - the service seemed too slow, but I was late for a movie anyway, and neither the sushi nor the tempura ice cream excited me that much. But I gave it a second chance, and liked it better. So this third time I thought would decide it for me.

The friendly hosts got me a menu quick and I ordered sake - this time a cold, dry one, because I wanted to try it (I think I like it warm instead). As usual I looked over the menu a while, trying to find some things to eat. I then saw a section of dinner combos, which offered the same things I wanted - in this case, sashimi, shrimp tempura, miso soup, salad and rice - for $18, about $10 less than they would be a la carte! And so I went ahead and ordered the shrimp tempura - sashimi combo.

The first thing to come out - the salad - was accompanied with an assurance that the soup was coming soon. It only came out after I finished the salad. But I was surprised with the tastiness of this salad. It was mostly iceberg lettuce, an instant turn-off. The one thing that made it edible was the delicious, tangy ginger dressing on top. It was the best such dressing I have ever had. I actually at the whole salad! Iceberg lettuce and I ate it all. Amazing! The soup came next, and was more onion-y than most, which I liked.

The sashimi was the next thing to come out. Their presentation was beautiful! Little cuke rosettes, paper-thin lemon wedges next to folded-up pieces of raw salmon. There was even a big plastic bonzai tree on the plate, with a little plastic crane, and propping up a small stalk of celery. Even the shell-shaped plate added to the presentation. Cute, and it masked what turned out to be a more appetizer-sized helping of sashimi. It was still good. The tempura came out next, and made it all look like more than I could finish (okay, it was more than I could finish). One new thing: tempura red bell pepper, which I've made on my own but never had in a restaurant. I ate half and boxed the rest. I just finished the rest for breakfast.

Of course, I had to have tempura ice cream for dessert. Unlike Chiu's, it did not easily fall apart when I put my spoon into it. I remember why I was not too thrilled at first with it: it tasted a little grainy, probably due to, I assume, cake crumbs that act as a buffer between the batter and the ice cream, and which helps keep the ice cream from melting. But it was warm on the outside, and satisfying.

The total bill came to about $31, before a $5 tip. All in all, a good trip. I think the third time was the charm, and I will go back.