Best of the Best Restaurant Week: 2/24/08 – 2/29/08
February 21st, 2008
Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine announced this year’s first Restaurant Week which will take place starting this Sunday 2/24/08.
Participating restaurants in the Minneapolis area serve tasting menus during lunch and dinner throughout the week (although not all places offer both). Lunch menus range from $10-$30 and dinner menus are $30. Some restaurants also include a wine tasting flight to accompany the tasting menu.
Last year, I visited La Belle Vie during Restaurant Week and it was unbelievably phenomenal. Although we don’t intend to visit it again this time, I’m hoping there will be another Restaurant Week in March like last year.
Make reservations ASAP to get a table – they fill up fast!
Restaurants participating next week that I would recommend:
Azia Restaurant & Anemoni Sushi – they’re offering a sushi/sake menu in addition to regular menu options
menu | reservations | website
Cafe Barbette
Pip’s Plate review | menu | website
menu | reservations | website
Campiello – I’m not typically a fan of American Italian, but their menu looks pretty good
menu | reservations | website
Cosmos
menu | reservations | website
Herkimer Pub & Brewery
La Belle Vie
Masa – I’ll be hitting this up for lunch
menu | reservations | website
Otho Restaurant and Street Lounge – a new place downtown Minneapolis; the reviews on citysearch sound promising; I’ll be hitting this up for dinner
Palomino – I’ll be hitting this up for lunch
menu | reservations | website
Red Stag Supperclub
Saffron Restaurant & Lounge – Love love this place; I’ll be hitting this up for dinner
Town Talk Diner
menu | Pip’s Plate review | website
Vincent
menu | reservations | website
You can see all of the participating restaurants and their menus at the MSP Mag’s website.
New Year's Resolution: Bake More
February 14th, 2008
I know it’s a little late to be writing about New Year’s resolutions, but it’s been on my mind for awhile now. A good friend of mine has a collaging party every year at the beginning of the new year. She calls it “Collage Your Intentions.” We take a bunch of magazines and put together a collage on poster board that visually indicates what our intentions are for the next year, for the future, for whenever. The date doesn’t have to be specific. Something might grab you in a way that you didn’t realize before.
A lot of my collage this year had to do with food, cooking, and my kitchen. I’ve got some ideas about revamping my kitchen in my apartment to make it something more communal and inviting. That’s gonna take some $$ but I’m getting there. (tax return anyone?)
But part of my collage was about baking. I don’t really like baking. It’s somewhat of a science and I just don’t get it. I love cooking because you can play around with the ingredients and, most importantly, fix it in the middle if it goes awry.
But baking? You have to be so precise. It’s chemistry. Granted, I was really into chemistry and science for 5 or 6 years but quickly changed to art and the humanities when I realized the bio lab was the last place I wanted to be. So now I’m collaging about baking?
Yep. This year I’m going to bake more. And I have been. (It’s time for a non-curry post, don’t you think?)
It all started Super Bowl Sunday. I decided I wanted to make a cake with buttercream frosting. The cake was a disaster – dense and more like cornbread than cake. The frosting? What a complete mess. I know I’ve successfully made buttercream frosting before but this was unlike anything I’d made. It was all curdled and gross. And the worst part? I had no idea how to fix it.
So the next day I made cupcakes. Mmmmm….chocolate cupcakes. And they were good! I got the recipe from epicurious.com Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream. They were really delicious. But the frosting? I messed it up again. It was a totally different recipe but I still couldn’t do it. I’ll try again another time.
I am able to make pie though. I made pie crust last night so I can make blueberry pie tonight to take over to a friend’s house for dinner. The Joy of Cooking is a life saver. Especially when it comes to describing how to make pastry. We’ll see how it goes tonight.
Wow. I just added my first “Baking” tag. I wonder where this will go…
Gourmet Club: Take 1
February 6th, 2008
It seems like my friends and I have been talking forever about starting a gourmet club. You get a group of people together, everyone cooks, you drink wine, and have a great time. I know, it sounds like every weekend with my friends. But honestly, this is different!
Last fall we finally got our shit together and decided to schedule the first one in January. Ten people decided to join, which includes 4 couples and 2 singles so we paired up into groups of 2. Nicole’s boyfriend wasn’t interested, so she and I got paired up.
The idea is that whoever hosts that night chooses the theme and main course. January was the month of Gascony, France. Home to luxurious ingredients like foie gras and duck confit, as well as fishing, wine making and brandy distilling. The host decided to make duck confit and sent us info on Gascony.
I was responsible for the third course and it turned out that would be salad for the evening. First course was hors d’oeuvres, second course was garlic soup (YUM!) and the last course was dessert.
So the evening turned out pretty nice. Until the oven broke. Hahahah. I know we’ll look back in a couple years and say, “Remember our first gourmet club and Molly’s oven broke? And we had to use her upstairs neighbor’s? Ha!”
We went through plenty of wine and plenty of food…
First Course
Radishes with chive butter
Warm olives with rosemary, garlic and lemon
Escargot in herbed cream served on crostini
Paired with Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Champagne 2004
Second Course
Garlic Soup with truffle oil (yeah, forgot the truffle oil, woops!)
Paired with Chateau Grande Cassagne Rose – Costieres de Nimes 2006 (I’ve had this rose many times and it tasted absolutely scrumptious with this soup!)
Third Course
Baked Goat Cheese Salad
Paired with Villa Burdigala Bordeaux Millesime 2004
Fourth Course
Duck confit with cinnamon sauteed apples and carrots
Paired with 100% Cab Franc – Chinon Les Petites Roches 2006
Fifth Course
Apple Brandy Tatin
Paired with Larressingle Armagnac and Dow’s 10 Year Tawny Port
recipes after the jump
Coconut Curry Fried Rice
February 6th, 2008
One thing I love about winter is that I cook. A lot. But blogging? Damn, it’s been way too long since I last posted. And the worst part? I have a whole list of things I want to write about! So look forward to a slam of new posts.
Alright, so I made this rice last week and had to make it again this week cause I liked it so much. It’s very quick – it takes about 25 minutes due to the rice needing 20 minutes to cook. But if you have leftover rice, the cook time goes down to something like 15 minutes.
You can also vary the ingredients however much you like. I’ve swapped out the fresh ginger for lemongrass (it was good, but didn’t like it as much) and I’ve made it vegetarian and with chicken (you could also substitute pork or beef or tofu). You could also introduce fresh herbs at the end for added flavor – cilantro, Thai basil, regular basil, mint, etc.
Here’s the basic recipe and you can tweak it to however you like.
Coconut Curry Fried Rice
serves: 3-4
time: 25 minutes
1 cup Thai jasmine rice
2 cups water
2-3T peanut oil, divided
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 serrano chile or other hot chile, minced (I use the seeds for more spice – if you want it less spicy, omit the seeds)
1/2 pound shitake mushrooms, destemmed and sliced (kitchen shears work really well for destemming the mushrooms)
1/2 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, diced (optional)
2T red Thai curry paste
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1T fish sauce
1T fresh chopped cilantro
If you have a rice cooker, cook the rice in that so you don’t have to worry about it on the stove. Otherwise, put 2 cups water in a pot over high heat. Bring to a boil, add 1 cup rice, stir once, bring back to a boil and lower to a simmer. Cover and cook for 20 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes then fluff with a fork.
Heat 2T peanut oil in a saute pan over med-high heat. Add the garlic, ginger and serrano chiles to the pan. Stir around with a wooden spoon quickly for 30 seconds. If using chicken, add the chicken and stir around the pan to coat with the oil and seasonings. Cook the chicken for 1-2 minutes, until it’s about cooked through.
Add the shitake mushrooms, mix around the pan to coat with oil but then let sit. Moving mushrooms around a saute pan too often doesn’t give them the nice browning and also extracts a lot of moisture from the mushrooms, making your saute gooey. If you need to, add another 1T peanut oil to keep the mixture from sticking to the pan.
Cook the mushrooms for about 1 1/2 minutes, then stir around and let sit for another 1 1/2 minutes (this will give them a nice brown color and pull out the earthy flavor).
Meanwhile, whisk together the red curry paste (you can reduce this to 1T if you don’t like it spicy) and the coconut milk. Add to the saute pan and mix everything around. Scrape the bits of mushroom and chicken from the bottom of the pan (this is called deglazing) to get that flavor into the saute. When thoroughly mixed, add 1T fish sauce and mix around.
At this point, your rice should be about done. Add the rice to the saute pan and mix around, being careful to break up each piece of rice with the back of a wooden spoon. You can press the rice against the side of the pan to do this too. When the rice is completely mixed in, remove from heat and add the cilantro.
You can also serve this with grated lime zest over the top or quickly fried garlic and chiles (simply heat 1/4 cup peanut oil over med-high heat and add 3 cloves minced garlic and 1 minced serrano chile – cook the garlic and chile for 30 seconds then remove from oil and from heat. you can keep the flavored oil for later use too).
This dish would be nice served as a side to Tom Yum soup too.
