All together now – RESTAURANT WARS! It’s everyone’s favorite episode and this year Top Chef got all trendy, forcing the chef’testants to create a pop-up restaurant. Bourdain came back, Padma sported shoulder pads and one of the most controversial characters got the axe.
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Unless it’s mashed potatoes, I’m not into a side of mush. I once made a butternut squash-pumpkin-ruttabaga puree as a side to a cabbage hash, but that was once. Just once.
And now I possess a large bowlful of lentil puree. At first I wanted to make a lentil salad, but when my lentils tasted bitter, I doused them with soy sauce and threw them in the food processor for a prompt whipping.
I rolled the first batch of the puree, with slightly cooked and soy-flavored cabbage, into spring rolls. The rolls were then topped with a dipping sauce of grated carrots (using a microplane), sesame oil, sesame seeds and more soy sauce.
But the appetizer used only a third of the lentil puree. What to do? I googled “lentil puree” and found an idea from The Sneaky Chef.
Lentil Patties with Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Carrot-Soy Sauce
And I just want to put this reminder out there – I mess around in the kitchen. I love telling you what I’ve made and how I do it, but there is no exactness to my cooking. Take it as a guide.
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Forget who piles pastrami highest or fits the most varieties of cold cuts onto one hero roll. A great sandwich has come to mean more than just bigger, better and meatier. Across the country, a new breed of sandwich artisans are taking lunchtime to a whole ‘nother level. From California to New England, here are Endless Simmer’s top ten favorite new sandwiches.
Spuckie is a term used by old-school Bostonians to identify any sub sandwich, but it’s increasingly associated with this year-old Brookline shop. It’s also probably the one sandwich that most successfully merges the old-school method of overdoing it on Italian meats with the new world of artisan, veggie-centric goodness. Super-thin slices of fennel salami, hot capicola and mortadella are layered on an oversize ciabatta, then topped with gooey, hand-pulled mozzarella and a fresh olive-carrot salad. For even less traditional sandwich-lovers, there’s also an eggplant spuckie available.
At the risk of outraging an entire city, we’re going to say it: the Philly cheesesteak is boring. With no disrespect meant to the age-old art of slathering fake cheese on top of a mound of meat, we just think this is one classic sandwich that is ready for a creative update. Enter University City sandwich truck Koja, where the chewy cheesesteak meat is replaced with bulgogi, Korea’s signature thinly-sliced, spicy BBQ beef. It’s served on a hoagie roll that’s coated in sweet chili oil and accented by sauteed peppers and onions. Koja also offers bulgogi pork and bulgogi chicken variations, but the best part is the unbelievable price — $3. Read more about this amazing sandwich at My Inner Fatty.
Have you ever dug into a steamy styrofoam container of General Tso’s chicken and thought, “this is delicious, but it would be even tastier on a bun?” Of course you haven’t, that’s the most insane thing we’ve ever heard. But crazy is sometimes genius, as is proven at this tiny Seattle sandwich shop, where hunks of tender chicken are deep-fried and glazed in a tangy brown sauce, then served on a crispy baguette with caramelized onions and cilantro. The result is a supremely sticky, but utterly satisfying sandwich. (Photo: Sevius)
Another new West Coast outpost that achieves genius results by thinking outside the bun, LA’s great cheese-on-wheels purveyor offers several list-worthy grilled sandwiches, but none is more awe-inspiring than this. Sharp cheddar mac-and-cheese, strands of sweet BBQ pork and caramelized onions are all stuffed into two perfectly buttered-and-fried slices of white bread. Yes, it sounds like the horrifying 3 a.m. creation of a stoned college student. Yes, it actually works.
(Photo: Grilled Cheese Truck)
Upgrading Mexican street food has suddenly become a hot task of haute chefs around the nation, although the results often have us pining for the real thing. Not so at Rick Bayless’ Chicago sandwich shop, where tortas baked in the wood-burning oven take Mexican to levels we didn’t know existed. In this sandwich, silky strands of roasted suckling pig are served on crusty bread spread with black beans and achiote paste, then finished with a layer of pickled onions and habanero salsa. The Pibil may be one extra ingredient away from being a Top Chef disaster story, but as is, it’s perfection on bread.
Editor’s Note: Brooklyn resident, food writer and Serious Eats vet Hannah Smith-Drelich hops over to ES this week to answer a vexing food mystery — just what the eff is Welsh rarebit?
Welsh rarebit is a great thing. Its name conjures wet gloomy mountains and smokey cabins full of hunched, hairy people. At least, that’s what Wales looks like in my imagination. And Scotland, too. But apparently, Welsh rarebit doesn’t have that nostalgic throw-back effect (remember the good old Celtic days?) on everybody.
“It’s steak, right?” said one of my friends, suddenly concerned that maybe it wasn’t.
“I thought it was rabbit,” said another with barely-concealed disgust. She owned a pet bunny.
Welsh Rarebit is neither steak nor rabbit. In fact, it’s not even Welsh rarebit. The correct term is Welsh rabbit, which makes sense only when you put it into the context of the English making fun of the Welsh, which they did even back when everybody wore furs non-ironically. Welsh rabbit, at its simplest, is cheese on toast. The Welsh were notoriously fond of their cheese, and back in the 1700s they were also notoriously short on meat: hence, their version of rabbit was cheese on toast.
This tricky bit of linguistic mockery was ruined in 1785, when Francis Grose identified ‘rabbit’ with ‘rarebit’ in a document oddly titled A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Word historians have had their knickers in a twist ever since (especially the folks at Merriam-Webster), as ‘rarebit’ exists nowhere else as an independent word. Eccentric grammarian W.H. Fowler wrote in his 1926 Dictionary of Modern English Usage: “Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh Rarebit is stupid and wrong.”
Any way you slice it, this is not your average grilled cheese. Nor any dolled-up croque monsieur, for that matter. Welsh rarebit is, essentially, a fondue. Except instead of wine, there’s beer; instead of tiny Frenchy forks, there’s a thick hunk of bread foundering under the oozy weight of melted cheese. (Flash back to fur-wearing men hulking by a campfire.) Cheddar is most commonly used in recipes today, along with dried mustard, cream or milk, and Worcestershire sauce. In some British restaurants the dish is accompanied by something called Branston pickle.
“What is that?” I asked my waitress at Tea & Sympathy, a very British restaurant in Manhattan.
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You know how people go through with phases with books, movies, boyfriends, girlfriends and such? Well I’m going through a comfort food phase, so if anyone knows of how to make cake in a crock pot, let me know.
For now my latest comfort dessert is this rustic caramel pear torte. I’ll admit it does take an extra ten minutes to arrange the pear slices in the circular pattern. But to save some time you can always just throw the sliced pears in the bottom of the pan then pour the batter over it. The torte will taste the same either way — although as we all know, pretty foods always taste better.
Caramel Pear Torte
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Last week after a press dinner at Smith Commons (yes to the mushroom soup) Johanna and I checked out a few bars along H Street, NE, an area hard to get to from most of the city. We figured if we’re all the way out here already we might as well sniff out the scene.
We landed in Fruit Bat, a bar bursting with so much fruit that huge baskets hang low at the counter, blocking my view of the bartender (and the back mirror that I use to finger wave my hair back in place). I tried a pumpkin infused vodka, but when it didn’t taste like pumpkin pie I became upset.
Sometimes I just want a creamy drink. I was raised on Kahlua and cream (my mom would let me sip her’s during the last hour of our cousins’ bar and bat mitzvahs) and I sometimes I can’t shake the urge for liquid comfort.
A few nights later my friends Tim and Alice entertained. I didn’t have much to bring, but pulled together 2 bananas, a V8 and a Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout (in fact, from my Smith Commons goodie bag). I knew cocktail master Tim would find a good use for my gifts – a dream of a shake with all the comfort a girl could want.
PB, Banana and Vodka
Blend: peanut butter, banana, milk, honey, Kahlua, Creme de Coca, Vodka and ice.
(Photo: Dalekwidow)
