I am so smart. S-M-R-T.

Avec: Round 2

This image pretty much sums up my latest trip to Avec:

What did I order that didn’t have bacon/pork in it?  Seriously, after this meal I think I need a serious break from pork for awhile, considering that Eric and I made tonkatsu for dinner the previous night.

Eric and I got there at 6:30 and there already was a 30 minute wait.  No worries, we took a short walk around the block (because someone ate a whole personal pizza aka too much for lunch) and waited comfortably by the outdoor heaters.

My only complaint of the night was that it took forever for our waiter to greet us, to the point where we had been sitting at our table for about ten minutes and we still had no idea who our waiter was.

He finally came, we ordered wine, and set about the always challenging task of deciding what to order.

The guy sitting next to me (communal seating and atmosphere mind you) claimed to be a regular and said we had to get the dates.  Eric was a little hesitant, but it was the dish I absolutely had to have.  So then Eric picked a fish dish, knowing it would push my boundaries (I hate fish most of the time) and we settled on a veggie dish, leaving the possibility of ordering more.  We asked our waiter to bring out the dishes in the order he thought best.  So…

First Dish: Roasted Nichols Farm carnival squash with arugula pistachio pesto, shaved apples, podda and cider.

This dish was all about the pesto.  Seriously— I was cleaning what had fallen onto the plate with my fingers.  The shaved apples were a pleasant contrast to the texture of the squash.  It seemed like it would be easy to make at home, until I realized that the arugula pistachio pesto would be such a hassle to make for only two servings.  And then I started dreaming of dinner parties… sometimes I think I sound like I am 30.

Second Dish: Pan-roasted mackerel with mint-cured bacon, garbanzo beans, preserved lemon and nicoise olives.

Like I said.  Even my fish course had bacon in it.  Okay, honest revelation here: I’ve never eaten mackerel.  It was crispy on the outside (pretty much the only way I like fish) and I was surprised that it didn’t smell fishy (aka edible in my book).  Regardless, I made sure that there were garbanzo beans and a bit of the delicious lemony sauce on my fish with every bite.  I’d order it again.  Eric was pleased.

Third Dish: Chorizo-stuffed Medjool dates with smoked bacon and piquillo pepper-tomato sauce.

Let’s just say that the table next to us, after ordering 2 plates of dates during their meal, ordered them for dessert.  Calling them bacon wrapped dates is a little unfair; these were giant meatball sized balls of chorizo underneath a thin layer of date which was then wrapped with bacon.  They come four to an order and are accompanied with a crusty, hot out of the oven mini-loaf of bread, which should be torn into chunks and used to mop up all of the orangish red piquillo pepper-tomato sauce.  As Eric dipped his bread into the sauce I reminded him of bread’s superiority above rice, which cannot effectively get sauce from a plate.

So we were done… or were we?  At this point we were both feeling “content” but ready for dessert.  After hearing the dessert choices (a tart, a sorbet, yawn…) we decided to order another savory dish.  Our waiters eyes popped out a little bit, but whatever.  We were just following the cue of the diners on our right.

Dish Four: Wood-oven braised pork shoulder with Prince Edward Island mussels, braised tripe, tomato and savory streusel

Now I know what you’re thinking.  This girl barely eats fish and here is a dish with mussels and tripe in it.  But I had to order it, since it was the first thing Eric mentioned they had when chatting online/viewing the menu/dreaming at work.  All three things were right up his alley.  And to be honest, I’m glad we ordered it.  It was delicious.  The tripe soaked up the flavor of the tomato sauce and was a chewy texture next to the pork shoulder, which was so tender it fell apart into bite sized pieces.

And perhaps my favorite thing about eating at nice places is when we are done and the hostess asks us on our way out if she should call a cab for us.  We decline politely and laugh our way to the bus stop.

The Shame of Eating Dessert

Today’s Chicago-land Groupon (located here) is $20 dollars for $40 dollars worth of cupcakes at Swirlz, a boutique cupcake bakery.  Yay!  Cupcakes!

Serving cupcakes to your guests cuts down on dirty dishes and eliminates the shame of being the first one to cut into the cake. Instead of making a different cake to suit everyone’s tastes, you can get a dozen different flavors for fickle friends or firmly redefine adulthood with a cupcake-tasting party with a wine pairing for each scrumptious treat. Gone are the obnoxious protestations that a slice of cake is too big; because cupcakes fit neatly into your hand, you’ll be too consumed with the childlike delight of devouring the artful edibles to think about blown diets and foreign occupation.

Hold up.  Shame of being the first one to cut into the cake?  There is absolutely nothing wrong with being the first one to get dessert.  In fact, in my family, we compete over the right to get dessert first every Thanksgiving (the person who gets the Thanksgiving trivia question right).

There is no shame in eating dessert!!!  It really irks me when advertisers market this idea to women.  “Shameful,” “sinful,” “tempting” and “guilty pleasure” are all words used when marketing chocolate, dessert, and diet desserts like 100 calorie packs of anything or dessert flavored yogurt to women.  As if we are all going to ruin it all like Eve by taking one bite of dessert, assuming all women are constantly dieting.

And the constant marketing perpetrates this whole dessert as sin idea into society (Remember the Jezebel article about waiters and the “co-conspirator” approach to ordering dessert?).

I’ll have my cheesecake and eat it too.  You can stop judging me now.

Flat Cookies And Trust: Response from the Moms

In response to my flat cookies, two different moms weighed in on the issue.  I think it has less to do about my relationship with my mother and more about parenting in general.  Lesson: you always assume your child did it wrong.  :o)

My mom: And are you sure you had all the right ingredients?

Lila’s mom: Whip the butter and sugar to death. Then just gently stir in the dry
ingredients, but not totally. Also, my recipe calls for a touch of baking soda.

Pets that Look Like Things

I am surprised at the amount of pictures my coworker has of her dogs (all 5 of them!) next to things that they look like.  From a mozzarella cheese covered steak (below) to a jack-o-lantern, she’s got enough pictures to fill a blog.

My Adventures In Cookie Baking...

I will start this post by divulging that:

• I am the granddaughter of a baker.
• The family bakery put my father and all his siblings through college.
• The family bakery is still up and running in Zion, Illinois.

That being said, the art of baking obviously doesn’t get transferred down family lines through blood.  It takes some practice, which this 23-year-old is still working on.

This weekend, I thought I would try to make the Oatmeal Smiths recipe from Frites & Fries that came across my greader the other day.  The picture looked tasty and the recipe seemed simple enough:

• 3/4 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 c. Quaker Oats Quick Oats
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 c. unsalted butter
• 1/2 c. light brown sugar
• 1/4 c. cane sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 Granny Smith apple, cored, peeled and diced into 5mm cubes

Preheat the oven to 350F. Combine the oats, flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon in a large mixing bowl. In a small bowl, melt the butter and let it cool. Add the sugars and vanilla into the small bowl, and then add the egg. Combine the small bowl into the large bowl filled with the dry ingredients. Using a soup spoon or a tablespoon, scoop the batter onto a cookie sheet lined with unbleached parchment paper, spacing them at least 1” apart. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden.

I followed the recipe word for word and what do I get?  These:

Cookie fail.  Don’t worry, the green crocodile is providing the “Waa wannn” for us all.  At this point, I was ticked, remembering my last attempt at baking cookies, which was this:

Flat, flatter than flat chocolate chip cookies, made with the recipe on the back of the Toll House chocolate chip package (the classic).  I figured the reason that they didn’t rise was that the flour and brown sugar I had on hand could have been up to a year old.  But with the Oatmeal Smiths, I had new flour and sugar on hand.  Clearly I was wrong.

What to do then?  Consult our good friend, Google.  The search “why are my cookies flat” provided a few links and now I think I have the answer:

• The butter needs to be cold. Notice how the recipe calls for melted butter.  I was just following directions!  But this piece of advice was in pretty much every forum.  Apparently butter, which contains water content, makes the dough thinner and more prone to spreading on the pan.  Some recommended substituting 1/2 of the butter with shortening, which doesn’t have any water in it.
• The dough needs to be cold. Along the same lines as the butter advice, but some people chill the dough in the fridge before baking.  Some put the whole cookie sheet and dough balls in the freezer for 5-10 minutes before baking.  After the first botched oatmeal smith batch, I put the dough in the fridge for a little bit and it seemed to help.  The second batch remained somewhat “cookie-like,” and I would be curious to try it again for longer.
• Use parchment paper or a silpat liner. Okay, so this I didn’t find in the search results but it did come to mind as I was scraping the cookies off the cookie sheet and thus disfiguring them.  A Silpat liner will definitely be on my Christmas wish list this year.

Can anyone offer any other advice?

And finally, to prove that I actually can bake things (other than cookies), here is the Glazed Lemon Bread from Simply Recipes that I made for Traveling Brunch the other day.  Must have gotten the butter temperature right on that one. ;o)