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!