It's Baltimore Restaurant Week again?

Yes it is. As a gentle reminder, dinner prices at participating restaurants are now $35 not $30, but lunch prices remain $20 at restaurants that do Restaurant Week lunch. It runs from today through August 22 at most restaurants that take part. And remember, a handful of these places are letting Restaurant Week go on beyond the 22nd, but check the websites to find out who is doing that.

And all this while Sonic celebrates its first day open in Baltimore. Yay, Sonic! But that's for another post...

Green Tomato and Pickle Salsa

My sister made crab cakes last night - with crab meat picked by her own hands - and I saved it for lunch today. As an accompaniment, I was thinking how to use the vegetables and herbs from my garden, and realize that many things in my fridge are things I love to eat fried: green tomatoes (from the garden), pickle chips (not from the garden), and zucchini (from the farmers' market). I saved the zucchini for later, and used the green tomato and pickle chips for the basis of a salsa. Green tomatoes are common in salsas. Pickles are common in relishes, which are kind of like a salsa if you think about it hard enough. But I've not seen green tomatoes and pickles in a salsa together. Well, that's over.

Green Tomato and Pickle Salsa

2 firm medium green tomatoes, diced
4 to 5 sweet pickle chips, diced, or 1 small sweet pickle spear, diced
1 - 2 tablespoons juice from the pickle jar
1 tablespoon lemon or lime juice
3 small green chili peppers, diced (with or without seeds as to your liking)
1 large clove garlic, diced
1/2 to 1 small red onion
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt
several sprigs mint, basil or cilantro, chopped

Fry the garlic, red onion and chili pepper in the olive oil with a little sprinkle of salt over medium heat until soft and slightly brown, to release the flavors. Meanwhile, mix the green tomato, pickles and herb together in the pickle juice and lemon or lime juice. Add the fried items and mix well. Refrigerate.

Note: This salsa is based on stuff I had lying around and was rather cheap for me to make. One thing here or there can be omitted if you don't have it around. You could also experiment to see what might be a good addition. But the green tomatoes and pickle chips are mandatory.

I was surprised at how well it turned out. Usually, when I get a last-minute idea for a recipe it does not always turn out too well. The pickles were a nice, surprising addition and the mint seemed to tie the whole salsa together.

Recent Eats - Dog Days 2010 Edition

Just a few notes on a few places I've eaten at lately...

1. Lumbini

I had planned to stop at Sláinte Pub to see the big Manchester City-AC Milan game on July 31, but an emergency kept me from doing that. So I headed out to look for a TV that had the game. With no luck there, I gave up completely and went for Nepalese. Instead of Kumari, which usually impresses me, I decided to try out Lumbini on Charles Street. I was willing to try out something different than the norm. For me that was the sukuti lamb with bhatmas sandeko (fried soybeans) and puffed flattened rice. The waitress warned me ahead of time that the sukuti lamb is a love it or hate it sort of dish. I was still willing to try it. The verdict? Well, as she said it would be, it was very chewy and dry, and probably not something I would order again. But I'm not sure I'd go back to Lumbini anyway. Despite the fairly empty dining space, the service was quite slow - I admit that this is possibly due to what I ordered, so I can give them a pass on that. But the items that were not all that unusual were also more or less average. Particularly unsatisfying was their garlic naan, which didn't have much of a garlic flavor for me. I don't know. You may like it, but I'm sticking with Kumari.

2. Thai Landing

It's been a while since I've been to Thai Landing. I should head back more often. I'm glad I did before the summer ended, since soft shells are featured on their summer menu. You can have your soft shell crab prepared in any of four different ways. Mine, the pu nim chu chee, was a mixture of coconut milk and Thai chili paste with carrots and snow peas and a nice crispy soft shell crab in the middle (I had just one for $16; two will run you $26). It didn't look as filling as it turned out to be.

3. Stoneleigh Bakery Café

This place is literally a five minute drive from my apartment and I haven't set foot into it before this week. I've already been back a second time. They have sandwiches, salads and bagels, plus their own cream cheeses, but it's their cookies I have come for. Try their Linzer Cookies, a jam-filled sandwich cookie that feels so good in the mouth when it gets warm and soft. My favorite is their Chickpea Delight. It feels dry but just dissolves in your mouth in seconds.
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Kitchen Science: "Two Minute" Spaghetti (well not really)

I was going through my typical early Sunday afternoon ritual - listening to Splendid Table on the radio while driving up and down 83 from Wegman's to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, and maybe Giant. Somewhere around Padonia Road, my jaw dropped into my lap. Lynne Rosetto-Kasper's guest, Kate Heyhoe, author of Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen, was helping Lynne and listeners with some tips on how to cook in an environmentally-friendly way. A big part of this involves how much energy you use in your kitchen.

One of Heyhoe's suggestions caught both Lynne and myself off-guard: when boiling spaghetti, don't boil it until al dente. Instead, boil it for 2 minutes, and then do the following: turn off the heat but don't remove the pot from the burner, and cover the pot for the remainder of the time that the pasta would have to boil. It will turn out al dente. Needless to say, Lynne was skeptical, but willing to try it. I was almost as skeptical, but curious, so tonight I made up a nice basil-mint pesto* and did the two minute pasta thing.

It worked. The damn procedure worked! The reason it works is because the residual heat in the pot continues to cook the pasta while the lid is covered. Were I to take the pot off the burner or leave the lid off, it would not work. Heyhoe makes similar suggestions for baking things in the oven. You save 7 minutes of heating the kitchen by just, in essence, steaming the pasta until it's al dente. It's interesting enough that I will probably do this again.

* Hey, basil is in the mint family. Why not?

Stainer Chocolate

Ma Petite Shoe had its monthly First Friday chocolate happy hour (is it a chocolate and shoes happy hour? I don't know) yesterday and I stopped by for something chocolate. Though I was tempted to buy something of the "genuine Chiapan cacao" or "Mo's Bacon Bar" variety, I quickly threw out those ideas when I saw a curious seciton of chocolate bars with spices and flower petals infused in them. Andrea Steiner Chocolate, out of Italy, has landed on to US shores and found their way to Hampden, hon. Though I almost grabbed a 50 g (1.75 oz) box of rose or violet chocolate for about $6, I went in for the white chocolate with saffron. Though the texture was not too out of the ordinary for me, the flavor was pleasantly unusual. I thought the saffron went well with the white chocolate. My sister, on the other hand, got a very sour look on her face. As she popped the chocolate into her mouth, I saw her grin turn into the funniest look of displeasure I have ever seen on the face of any woman who was eating chocolate at the time. Really, I thought Cathy would like it. Guess not. Now the rose-petaled bar she is more than up for, so I will get her one of those.

Screw Chick-Fil-A...

The first Sonic Drive-In ever to open in the Baltimore area opens up on Liberty Road in Reiserstown on Friday, August 13! Last I heard, future ones are slated for Ellicott City and Lansdowne (and note to Sonic: it ain't pronounced "ElliCOT" but "ElliKIT"). I don't know if this is still true but I sure hope so (except that most of my family lives in Lansdowne, and I will stop there more often than my waistline will like).

More info on the first Bawlmer Sonic can be found at the official "Sonic of Baltimore" Facebook page.

Hello, my little crabadee!

This is why I'm glad I live in Maryland:


The top is crab meat, the bottom is a plate of crabs. Yes, they were delicious.

The Atlantic Magazine takes on Egyptian street food

I have never heard of this uniquely Egyptian fast food, kushari, the pasta-rice-garbanzo-lentil with tomato and crispy onion dish. Now I have to figure out a way to make this. As Maggie Schmitt noted about it for The Atlantic Magazine's website, this street food is now becoming posher, as more sit-down restaurants are popping up to sell the stuff:

Instead of disappearing before the onslaught of hamburgers and fried chicken, local street foods are updating their image and presentation, and competing with international fast food on its own terms, targeting a middle class with increasingly urbane tastes. While in the older neighborhoods kushari is still ladled out from wooden street carts and in tiny hole-in-the-wall eateries, in the swankier parts of town you can get your fix at a gleaming new kushari restaurant franchise with formica banquette seating and waiters in uniforms with baseball caps.

Hopefully it'll show the McFalafel who's boss. There are also glorious photos of kushari and some places that serve it with the article. I just ate and it's making me hungry again.

Proposition 8 Ruled Unconstitutional!

I had to get out and celebrate the news out from the West Coast that Prop 8 is ruled unconstitutional. As the judge said himself, "Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gays and lesbians for denial of a marriage license" (this from Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic).

So I headed down to Mount Vernon to celebrate. First I had a Flying Dog (draft, $4.25) at the Grand Central - where I struggled as fast as I could to get away from some annoying drunk bragging about a $5000 bonus he got while I'm here trying to find a full time job. Happily fleeing that drunken fool, I skidded on over to the Mt. Vernon Stable for a slice of Pimlico cake ($6.50).

Come on, Maryland, it is time!

Nigella's Bacon and Tomato Hash

I decided to start using up the many things that are just sitting and biding their time in my fridge, before they start molding over, with some Nigella love. Since I had all the ingredients for her bacon and tomato hash on hand (I saw this recipe yesterday on the Cooking Channel, mind you), I went ahead and made that. It turned out a little like the bacon wot that I made for the Great Grapes cooking contest in June, only wetter. It was also a great way to use up some of the tomatoes I got from my garden but haven't had time to do anything with yet.

Just take a few tablespoons of olive oil, heat, and add four thick slices of bacon cut into square pieces. Cook until kind of crispy. I added some more of that Berbere spice I just have lying around. Anyway, add two sliced cloves of garlic and two big juicy tomatoes. I also threw in a banana pepper or two from my garden just for extra flavor. Cook a few more minutes and serve. I am eating mine with rice and some roasted squash, and a bit of cilantro that went to flower. It's still good. You can eat the flowers, you know.