Endless Simmer - A Food Blog

Washington Post food blogger Kim O’Donnell made the exact same kitchen faux pax that I did. I think we must be cooking soul mates. Don’t worry, Kim – one day we’ll meet in a flaky, phyllo heaven.

Celebrity hot sauces are so hot right now. [Stereogum]

Hidden between fluff pieces on General Petraeus and President Ahmenidijad, the New York Times Week in Review offers an in-depth analysis of the cupcake trend, asking such soul-wrenching questions as:

- Should cupcakes be banned from school bake sales? (No!)

- Can the cupcake loyalist support the sale of a chocolate Guinness cupcake with green-tea cream cheese frosting? (Bring it!)

- Has the cupcake been stolen from the people by the baking aristocracy (are you fucking kidding me?)

Photo: Stereogum

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Every once in a while - not too often of course - I stop blogging about food for long enough to go cook something. Spinach pie (spanakopita) is one of the first semi-gourmet things I figured out how to make. It’ s one of those dishes that is fairly easy to do but somehow still really impresses people.

Unfortunately, I seem to have run into some bad kitchen karma lately, possibly due to my making fun of gansie and Howie. While shopping for ingredients, I made a major mistake and bought plain old puff pastry dough instead of perfect phyllo. So I had my spinach filling all mixed and ready to go, and opened up my phyllo to discover that instead of 100 sheets of beautiful flaky goodness, I had four doughy layers of puff that would be much better for making some kind of weird English meat pie than the delicate spanakopita.

I grabbed a rolling pin and did some emergency work, flattening them out to more sheet-like layers and then just went ahead and made it anyway. Fortunately, this was one of those “how bad can it be” situations, since it was still a mixture of dough, butter, spinach and cheese.

Recipe, assuming you buy the correct ingredients, after the jump.

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It has taken me two full days to digest the craziness of this week’s Top Chef, which was chock full of spam, fruit loops, and IMHO one of the worst sins a reality show contestant can commit.

The Cheftestants started out with a supermarket sweep style quickfire challenge, where they only got ten dollars to spend in one aisle, so they were limited in their ingredients to a comical degree.

Michael Schwartz served as perhaps the snottiest guest judge they have had yet, most critically showing absolutely no respect for what in my mind was the dish of the competition so far: Hung’s fruit loop-potato-leek-smurf-village whatever it was. Bravo has for some unknown reason not included this genius recipe on their site. What gives Bravo?  As far as I am concerned, this should be on the menu at every haute cuisine restaurant in America.

Instead Brian won for his spam-filled dish, which did look pretty fancy, but come on, it had spam in it.

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After a good few years of anticipation, I finally made it to D.C. institution Marrakesh this weekend, courtesy of Travis’ bachelor party. This Morrocan place is an event restaurant - speakeasy-style entrance to a cavernous space, sexy belly dancers, endless shots for the bachelor - but I was obv. most excited for the seven course meal. 

While Marrakesh puts on a party and a half, I have to say I wasn’t blown away by most of the food. Some fairly standard couscous, hummus and baklava, with slightly more impressive lemon roast chicken and almond-honey lamb. The standout course was the B’Stella, pictured above in before and after mode. It’s the kind of loopy dish that would make you think someone had a few screws loose if they served it to you in their home, but a fancy restaurant can pull it off. Phyllo dough stuffed with chicken, egg, onion, nuts and topped with kilos of powdered sugar.  No utensils, just dig in and go.  A gooey, glorious mess. More pics from Marrakesh after the jump.

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It’ s that time of year again - Greekfest!!….what,  you didn’t know? I had a pretty freakin amazing time at Greekfest 2006 DC so this year I trekked down to the surprisingly large Greek cultural epicenter in Norfolk, VA. on a press junket for food bloggers to visit my bro, his wife and the new baby…Pretty impressive show those ConfedeGreeks put on - I completely stuffed myself with moussakka, souvlaki and rice pilaf. But come Monday, we just weren’ t ready for Greekfest to end so the sister-in-law and I decided to try our hand at baklava. Now, phyllo dough is one of my fav ingredients, but I haven’t done many desserts, so we checked a variety of recipies online, before realizing there was one on the phyllo dough box. We went with that, because, really, the phyllo dough box probably knows what it’s talking about when it comes to baklava.

Not too complex - basically the same thing as anything else with phyllo…layer the sheets and make sure each one has enough butter to drown a horse. Alternate layers of filling (chopped walnuts, sugar, cinnamon and cloves). Bake it for 45, then top with Syrup, which we made by simmering boiling water, honey, sugar and lemon zest.

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