Anxiously Awaiting Pickles

I pickled for the first time last weekend. I made dill pickles with regular ol' pickle mix from the grocery store. I needed to do something quickly with my cukes that I had to salvage from the great hail storm (more to come on that).

Earlier that day, I saw some beautiful carrots at the Boulder Farmers' Market: yellow, white, and purple. So I decided to try a recipe I'd seen in Molly Wizenberg's book: Spicy Pickled Carrots with Garlic and Thyme. This was the just about the last recipe that I thought I'd try from this book and it turns out it was the first one! I just couldn't resist those beautiful carrots and I was in a pickling mood.

So I'll be trying both sets of pickles this weekend and will report back on how they turned out. But for now I'm just enjoying how pretty they look in my garage frig next to B's keg of Golden City Beer.

So why was I in a pickling panic? Well, we had the hail storm of all storms about a week and a half ago and it destroyed my beautiful garden. Our roof, a window, 2 screens, and a gutter need to be replaced, but I'm most upset about the garden, which now looks like vegetable slaw.

Just look at the carnage:







I salvaged what I could: about 5 cukes, 2 zuchhini, 2 yellow squash, and a couple of tomatoes. I might still get some tomatoes and possibly some zucchini, but for the most part the garden is toast. And it was my best one ever. Whah!

Wine Bar Week - Tuesday

On Tuesday of our week with no kids, I met B at Caveau Wine Bar for their happy hour. I had taken the day off and celebrated with a massage at Massage Envy, which turned out to be a mistake. The masseuse coughed and hacked through the whole thing, claiming she had just eaten something peppery. I should have left, since it was uncomfortable, gross, and not even a little relaxing, but I was too chicken. So I was needing a glass of wine. (Who feels like that post-massage?)

Caveau has a nice wine list. Again, it was mighty hot that day and the place was blistering. I noticed they didn't have many wines in their racks--they were all in the temperature controlled coolers. We also shared the meat and cheese plate, which had 3 meats and 3 cheeses.



We later headed over to D Bar Desserts, since it was just down the street. They have a small, but good wine selection. We sat at the bar and watched owner Keegan Gerhard make something delicious, actually painting with chocolate. He was teaching a woman his techniques, which was interesting to watch. The place is definitely an homage to him with Food Network shows playing on a television screen and a digital photo frame displaying his works.

We weren't terribly hungry and I mainly wanted dessert, so I had a watermelon salad and B had the recommended baked mac & cheese made with four cheeses, cheese nips, & panko crumbs. I heard Gerhard tell another person at the bar that the cheese nips were to give it a Kraft mac'n'cheese-like taste.



So then dessert, what we really came for. We started with their famous "Cake and Shake," choosing vanilla on both sides.



It definitely lives up to the hype. I especially enjoyed the shake with the little malted milk balls.

But I thought the ice cream sandwich was even better.



They start with homemade waffles with rock sugar baked right in. And they make the waffles when you order it--they're not premade. They top it with vanilla ice cream and the most heavenly smelling 3-cherry compote. I thought I was going to keel over from the smell of the cherries cooking. It's fun to watch your dessert made to order right in front of you. Talk about making your mouth water! Then they top all that with amaretto cream.

The young man making our ice cream sandwich said he works at D Bar only once a week and works at a sushi bar the rest of the time. I thought that was an interesting combination and you could see a sushi-like attention to detail in his dessert.

My sister is really into baking and desserts and probably should have been a pastry chef. I can't wait to bring her here.

Farmers' Market

I hit the Wheat Ridge farmer's market today, which runs Thusdays 11 am - 3 pm. A nice little market with lots of produce. Here's my haul:



Kale, lettuce, boiler onions, yellow squash, corn, and cantaloupe.

Get Up In My Grill

Since it's cold and rainy today, let's talk about grilling. Here are two of my current favorite poultry recipes. Unfortunately, I have them written on recipe cards and don't know who to credit them to. I googled the recipes, but didn't find a source.

Grilled Spice-Rubbed Chicken with Lemon and Garlic Oil

This is one of my favorites, such a flavorful combination of ingredients. B is not too fond of it, since he doesn't like fennel or cilantro, but too bad, we make it anyway, cuz momma loves it.

Mix:
1 1/2 t fennel seeds
1 1/2 t ground coriander
3/4 t dry mustard
3/4 t salt
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t ground red pepper

Rinse 4 chicken breast halves. Pat dry and then rub spice mixture all over. Grill chicken.

Mix and spoon over chicken:
1/4 C olive oil
1/4 C minced fresh cilantro or parsley
3 T lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 t salt


Curry and Honey Turkey Breast Cutlets with Chutney Raita

Everyone likes this dish. We make it with chicken too.

4 turkey breast cutlets (~ 1 1/2 lbs.)
1 1/2 T curry powder
1 T honey
1 T vegetable oil
1/2 t salt
1/4 C mango chutney
1/2 C plain yogurt
1 T lemon juice

Preheat grill. Stir together curry, honey, oil, and salt and smear over both sides of cutlets. Grill cutlets ~ 8-10 min.

For raita, stir together chutney, yogurt, and lemon juice. Spoon over grilled cutlets.

Cooking Dirty

Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen by Jason Sheehan


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Sheehan is a good writer. I've enjoyed his work as a restaurant critic for Denver's Westword for awhile and he's managed to take that edgy style of his and expand it into a full book.

This book chronicles his life working in kitchens--not famous ones, just regular ol' restaurants. At times, it got a bit redundant. I wanted to say, okay, we get it: cooking on a line during the rush is like going into battle and the guys who do it are tough. The book could have standed a bit of editing--too many similar stories about getting slammed during a dinner (or late night) rush. The book finishes with a little bit about how he got into food writing.

But all in all, I really enjoyed this book. The book will inevitably be compared to Bourdain's, but while that book is touted as an expose of the restaurant industry, this one is more of a memoir of how Sheehan has used and abused himself and turned out okay in the end.

And I'm wondering if the restaurant in the epilogue is Osteria Marco?

View all my reviews >>

Wine Bar Week - Monday

The next night we started off with dinner at Osterio Marco. Dinner began, of course, with their famous house-made burrata. It never disappoints.



Look at that yummy cocktail garnished with basil:



B had the house-sausage pizza and I tried the mushroom & asparagus orzo with parmesan fonduta & truffled arugula. Mine was good, but I should have stuck with several small plates, like I've done in the past. I prefer their antipasti and salume. The cheese in the orzo was a little overpowering.

After, we went across the street to Cru Wine Bar. I was surprised to learn that they are a chain, with locations in Denver and Texas. The walls are covered in handpainted "blown up" wine labels, which is kind of cool until you find out that they're really just advertisements and the wine distributors pay to have their wines painted there. Those "peeling edges" you see are painted, not really peeling. Kinda cool!



Our server was really nice and excited to talk about wine, which is always fun. I had the "Latin Affair" flight with two wines from Spain and one from Argentina. The wines were very similar and I would have preferred a more "progressive" flight.



All in all, it's a place I wouldn't seek out as a destination, but if I happen to be in the neighborhood (and that's fairly likely since it's in Larimer Square), I might stop for one glass.

Week O' Wine Bar Crawl (and more) - Sunday

Yippee--the kids were away at the grandparents' cabin! B and I hit the town each night in search of the perfect wine bar.

First stop (Sunday night): Jonesy's EatBar. Not necessarily a wine bar, but a very good wine list. We actually went there for dinner. And I didn't even start with wine: I started with a "Rocky Mountain Sweet Tea" made with Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka, water, and a dash of Leopold Brother's Three Pins Alpine Herbal Liqueur (apparently they used to be in Ann Arbor--didn't know that until just now). What a dangerous drink! It tastes so much like regular sweet tea and not very alcoholic at all. I decided later that I wanted to make my own, and made the mistake of letting B talk me into buying another brand of sweet tea vodka that was on sale at Argonaut. Nope, you gotta get the Firefly. The stuff I got, although "handcrafted" is kind of nasty.

Here I am with my sweet tea, B's Breckenridge 471 IPA, and our Truffle Fries ("tossed with truffle oil & drizzled with truffle aioli"). Yum Yum. Pardon the crappy phone pic.



Now this really is a crappy phone pic. I had the Coconut Green Curry Mussels with red grapes & fennel. O.M.G. Absolute heaven. They were probably the best mussels I've had all year (and I've had some good ones). Spicy, a little sweet, and perfectly cooked. B had the fried shrimp po-boy sliders with shredded cabbage, tomato & spicy remoulade. They were decent, but didn't even compare with my mussels. For once, I won the menu lottery (B does far more often than me--I usually end up begging him for more bites of his, and being the wonderful husband that he is, he obliges).



My main complaint about Jonesy's (and just about every place we went this week) is that it was ungodly hot (a rough combination with my mussels which were already making me sweat). This was the week that was the hottest so far this summer and pretty much every place we went to was without air conditioning. Not something I'd normally mind, since I usually prefer fresh air, but this particular week, I wanted my a/c. Jonesy's definitely should get a few fans at least for some air circulation.



Since we were in the area and it was our first night sans kids we headed over to my favorite place for



COCKTAILS!

Steuben's, of course. We, as always, had fabulous service at the bar, but when we moved outside for fresh air, it did not fare as well. Oh well, the cocktails make me happy no matter what.