Fancy Food, Part 2

I agree with most of what The Pedant said about the fancy schmancy restaurant (well, it wasn't so fancy schmancy in attire and looks as it was in prices...). I did find everything to be a bit too oily, but that's because everything was sauteed/grilled/swimming in oil. But oil's good for you, yes? So it was fine.

The Ravioli was really superb, I should reiterate that.

Also, finishing up a meal with Amaretto and a chocolate crepe with nutella filling is amazing. Just superb. Yum!

The Treif You Crave

I'm sure by now you've heard of the winner of the annual White Castle recipe contest; you know, the woman who put chopped-up steamed hamburger bits in the root vegetable celebration of the victory of crazy fundamentalist Jews over assimilation-forcing Greek-wannabes. Hey, how many holidays do you have from the Apocrypha? I thought so!

Of course, the first thing I thought of was, "there's a White Castle recipe contest every year? Who knew?" And there is. According to the rules, the next deadline is July 13, 2008. The web entry form is found here. You take ten burgers and turn them into some non-burger food. Winner gets more burgers than he or she should ever eat; although, since the last time I ate at White Castle I and a couple other stupid people bought a box of 100 burgers, moderation doesn't really come into play.

Awesome Restaurant in Excruciating Detail

QueenofPink77 and I do not agree about most things on the Food Network, but we do agree about Sandra Lee's general uselessness.

But enough about that, let me tell you about the fabulous dinner the Sherbs and I had last night. We went to Cucina Vivace, which we picked out of the three Italian restaurants on the street because it was cold and I needed to use the bathroom, so we didn't want to cross the street, and the Italian restaurant next to it was a pizza place, and we were looking for classy.

And boy, did we get classy. Let me describe the food I ate, in order:

1) Crostini with white beans and anchovies. The restaurant gave these to us for free because we were clearly not just confused and stopping in for a bowl of spaghetti, we were buying into their $50+/per person ethos. The Sherbs, as she will tell you, does not eat fish, so I ate both. They were delicious. The white beans were perfectly buttery, and with just a hint of anchovy and garlic.

2) Roast bulb of garlic, covered in olive oil. Dig out a caramelized, squishy clove and enjoy. It was simple, but tasty.

3) Gnocchi in cream sauce with pancetta. The Sherbs doesn't eat meat, either, so I ate her pancetta. It is hard to make bad gnocchi in cream sauce. Cucina Vivace did well; it wasn't too heavy.

4) Sweet potato ravioli. Served with plenty of pine nuts. The Sherbs and I shared, and I thought it was fantastic; I could have had it for a main course. The potato was creamy and delicious.

5) Roast pheasant in pepper and fig relish, served with fried triangles of polenta and pureed parsnip. A little too much pepper in the fig relish, and not enough going on with the polenta, but otherwise masterfully done, and at least a four for plating. The parsnip was very tasty.

6) Bread pudding with mixed berries and creme fraiche. Delightfully eggy and not too sweet. I had it with the only dessert wine they sold by the glass, which was a mistake; I should have taken my cue from the Sherbs and had it with amaretto, which matched the heaviness of the pudding better.

It was an excellent meal, and we'll totally go again when someone else is paying for it.

BritBit!

I guess it's kind of silly to say "UK blogs are making a fuss about rarebit," since the whole concept began in Wales, but the Guardian has a picture of a particularly cheesy example, with links both the Guardian's own rarebit and a UK foodblogger's attempt at same (with delicious pictures).

The rarebit recipe looks pretty darned tasty, especially on some brown bread. I wonder how it would go with canned brown bread, a food I have not eaten since childhood. It was awesome in its 50's-style futurism; the bread is a cylinder, because it's in a can! It lasts forever! It tastes vaguely sweet and metallic!

Also, smaller rounds mean more servings, or for use in our home tasting menu.

Cereal for Lenin

I've bought some new purportedly healthy cereal: Special K with Red Berries. It's Special K, Kellogg's version of Total, with astronaut strawberries.

I call the cereal "Communism," now; it started with my being pointlessly McCarthyite and calling it "Special K with Communism," and that just got shortened to "Communism."

Freeze-dried strawberries rehydrate interestingly, so after the super-huge Costco box is expended, I may not get it again. But it's not bad; just not as good as Honey Bunches of Sugared Grain.

But, for the moment, if my breath smells like wheat and freeze-dried strawberries, I've been eating Communism.

FYI - "I've been eating Communism" was, until this blog post, a Googlenope.

A Bone to Pick

I have a bone to pick with vegetable sushi. Now, I understand sushi is chic and very hip and therefore can be costly. Fine, I get it LA, you want us all to be uber thin (<begin tangential rant>I'm still ticked at the stupid body issues talk Tyra gave to her girls on America's Top Model (it was a fluke, there was nothing else on and The Pedant and I needed to digest a lot of Halloween candy pre-gym), I mean, c'mon, yes the industry is ridiculous, but as TP reminded me, Spain has set minimum weight requirement on models - Tyra, use your pull and do something not let the girls be teary eyed and then throw up their salad! <end tangential rant>) and eat bite sized portions based on Japanese fancy cuisine, but $5.85 for 8 pieces of brown rice avocado sushi?! C'Mon guys! This is VEGETABLE. And RICE. Not fish that needs to be very fresh and cut well. Ok, I did get the dish at WholePaycheck Foods, but still. I find it frustrating when VEGETABLE sushi is more than $2.00 for 6 rolls.

I may make "I have a bone to pick" a reoccurring topic when I need to rant. Like, "I have a bone to pick with slow service." Ala dinner last night. Yes, TP and I settled, mostly because I had to pee pretty badly, but still the service was veeerrryyyy slllloooowwwwwww. Pick it up a notch guys!

Novels and a French-ish Restaurant

I am participating in National Pretentions to Literature Fad Month. Here's my NaNoWriMo profile. I will not talk about my novel as I need to get it out of my head into the novel, not into the blog.

Anyway, went to a cute French restaurant in Farragut West tonight with the Sherbs. It was called Cafe Soleil, and it was fair. The French onion soup was workmanlike, but not great. It's easy to make merely okay French onion soup, and they did.

The entree, a "seared duck salad," was really a "grilled duck noodle dish, served lukewarm with a token amount of field greens," but was okay for all that. The duck was well-cooked and tasty, and the noodles were in a good sauce if you unspooled them from their little pile and let them get into the sauce at the bottom of the plate. There were too many peppercorns as garnish. I am against food garnish that you're not supposed to eat, and unless you have an appetite for pepper like Cruella DeVil from the original 101 Dalmatians novel, it's too many.

Dessert was an okay chocolate cake with a too-heavy chocolate mousse topping. Toffee saved it, despite it being on a drizzle of apple and lemon syrups that looked pretty but did not taste at all right with the dish.

All in all, not worth the $25/person as we are no longer eating in New York.