The meal was fantastic. We started with a ginger cocktail and a beets & ricotta appetizer that blew us away. Beets and orange zest and cheese. fantastic. The cocktail was gingery and not too sweet. I wanted two more, but I had to drive.
Erin got a mushroom pizza with arugula, rosemary and robiola cheese. The robiola has a funky smell but the pizza was deelicious. My entre was the pork chop with creamy polenta, bacon, and some wilted greens that I forget. This was the best pork chop of my life. It was huge and perfectly cooked. I also received a side of brussel sprouts that were also fantastic. One thing I noticed was that all of our food had a char on it. The sprouts, pizza, and pork chop all had that bitter burnt char to them. Having said that, though, the flavors were awesomely balanced with other elements.

The price kinda blew me away. Even with all that perfectly prepared food, our meal was under $50. This explains why the place was packed at 5:30.

Now, a few weeks ago for Detroit Restaurant Week, Erin and I ate at Roast. Perhaps it was because of a poor menu choice, but I wasn’t very happy with my meal at Roast. I ordered the ‘beast of the day’, and ended up with just a plate full of pork. Now, I like meat as much as the next guy, but I can’t really get excited about a pile of pork, no matter how perfectly cooked it is. I feel like my waitress should have given me a heads up.

I was definitely happier with my experience at Lolita. I look forward to trying it again, or maybe even securing a reservation at Lola. From our experience in Tremont, I’m excited to check out more of Cleveland.

Thomas Keller's Scallion Potato Cakes

One of the things that inspired me were these hash browns from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home. They looked so delightfully crispy and definitely something that could be hand-held. Also, reading the instructions, I could definitely see how I could adapt them to include hippy hash.

Here is what I did, to much success:

First, prepare the filling. One whole tomato, cut into a small dice. Lightly salt the tomato and set aside. A handful of trimmed broccoli, boiled for 2 minutes in salty water, remove from water and let cool. Take a handful of mushrooms and cut them into 1/2 inch pieces. Put 1/3 cup of small onion dice in a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a small skillet. Cook on medium heat until the onions are translucent. Add the mushrooms and a sprinkle of kosher salt. Toss and let cook until mushrooms are soft and remove from heat. At this point I also added some minced pea shoot microgreens, I had them on hand, and the extra heat in the pan softened them up. Strain the tomatoes and cut the broccoli into the smallest florets. Mix the tomatoes and the broccoli in with the onions and mushrooms and remove the pan from the heat. Crumble some feta cheese into small crumbles that is about 1/3 of a cup.

For the potatoes: Peel three medium russet potatoes and grate them into a bowl of cold water using the medium coarse side of your box grater. I used a mesh strainer to strain the potatoes out of the water and rinse them slightly in cold water. I then pressed as much water as I could out of them. This could also be done with a salad spinner, or by laying them out on towels (paper or kitchen) and pressing the water out. Put the potatoes in a large bowl and spoon a few good spoonfuls of cornstarch around the edges of the bowl. For three potatoes you might need as much as 6 tablespoons of cornstarch. Toss this with a spoon or your hands to get the potatoes well coated.

Success

Get yourself one or two 2-liter bottles. The plastic ones that contain your favorite HFCS flavor work the best. Wash them out really well. You’ll also need a strainer, a funnel, a grater and some measuring cups.

Scrape the skin off of a large knob of fresh ginger. Grate the ginger on your box grater with the coarsest (largest) side. You’ll need about 3oz of ginger per batch. Go ahead and use the stringy bits that are left behind while you’re grating. 3 oz of grated ginger is about 1/3 of a packed cup, if you don’t have a scale. (If you don’t own a scale, BUY ONE).

Take 2/3rds of this grated ginger and put it in a small saucepan with 1/2 cup of water and 6oz of sugar. (6oz of sugar is about 3/4ths of a cup) Put this over medium heat and stir until the sugar is disolved. When you start to see some bubbles, take this off of the heat and cover. Let seep for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, stir in the rest of your grated ginger. Cover and let sit another 30 minutes.

While your syrup is soaking up ginger, fully juice one lemon. This should give you about 1/4 cup of juice. You’ll only need two tablespoons of lemon juice so you should have made two batches.

Using a funnel, pour the ginger syrup into the plastic 2-liter bottle. Give the 2-cup yeast & water mixture a quick whisk and pour into the funnel after it. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 3 more cups of water. I usually mix the lemon juice into the water first, but it doesn’t really matter. This means you’ve put in 7 cups of water, total. Oh, and the 1/2 cup that made the syrup.

Cap off the bottle and give it a good shake to mix it up. Put this bottle at room temperature for 2 days or so. You’ll want to give it a slight shake every day and check it for stiffness. Also, keep this bottle in another container, just in case it springs a leak. If you try to squeeze the bottle and it has absolutely no give, you probably want to put it in the fridge. Depending on the temperature this could happen in a matter of 24 hours, but most likely it will take 48. Recently during really warm weather the yeasts got really crazy and my ginger ale tasted more like funky yeast than ginger.

This ginger beer needs to be refrigerated before you can open the bottle. Carbon dioxide will only stay suspended in cold liquid, so any attempt to open this while warm will make a fizzy mess and give you flat ginger ale. As it is, you’ll need to crack this open slowly to release the pressure. Once it is cold, make sure you open it once a day, just to release the pressure that will still be building up.

This recipe mostly stolen from Alton Brown [ Food Network: Alton Brown Ginger Ale ]]]> http://www.rexroof.com/261/ginger-beer/feed/ 0 http://www.rexroof.com/222/what-i-cooked-last-night/ http://www.rexroof.com/222/what-i-cooked-last-night/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:52:30 +0000 Rex http://www.rexroof.com/222/what-i-cooked-last-night/ Yesterday I felt like having an egg salad sandwich. So, I made mayonaise. Just for good measure I added some pressed garlic into the mayo. Then I realized I was going to have too much mayonaise. So I looked for other ways to use it. I found inspiration in Ratio to put citrusey mayo on fish. I bought some rainbow trout and zested some lemon into a bit of my mayonaise. I rinsed and dried the fish, put it on some foil and slathered it with mayonaise. (this is where I forgot to season the fish, I should have, before the mayo went on) This wasn’t gross, I promise. I broiled the fish until I could see the thickest parts were opaque and the mayo was blistering but not burnt. I moved the fish away from the broiler at one point to help prevent burning the mayonaise.

At the store I picked up some redskinned potatoes. I rinsed, cut and boiled them in salted water. Then I softened some scallions in clarified butter and tossed the potatoes in the hot pan.

Lastly, I cooked a minced shallot in plenty more clarified butter, added some sliced button mushrooms and salt, cooked most of the liquid out and then added some sliced bok choy. Into this I tossed some red pepper flakes to give it some spice. I didn’t add anything else to this and it was good, but it could have maybe used some lemon juice or a fresh herb to give it a more interesting flavor.

The fish with mayo was good. I wouldn’t have done this with store-bought mayonaise, but with homemade it didn’t have that heavy mouth feel that mayonaise sometimes has. The lemon flavor came out and was delicious.

I still haven’t had that egg salad. Maybe tonight.

Every 10 minutes I opened the oven and basted on more of the soy & tare mixture. After 30 minutes I flipped the bird breast side up and basted it again. Repeat this process until the bird looks like it might start burning, or an hour has gone by. I also put a 1/4 cup of water into the dish if the juices in the dish were burning, or starting to. Normally I’d check the temperature, but after an hour at 400°, this bird is cooked. I removed the bird and let it rest on a plate. I tossed the potatoes a bit in the pan and put them back in the oven to crisp up a bit more while the meat had a rest.

Chop up the bones from 2-3 chicken backs, or use duck parts or turkey parts or whatever poultry bones you have. Extra meat and skin is good, too. Put them in an oven-proof saute pan or pot. Roast in a 400˚ oven for 45 minutes or so. You want the parts well browned, but not black at all. Take your bones out of the oven and put them on the stovetop over medium heat. Splash about ½ cup of sake into the pan and use it to scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Once all the brown bits are up, add another ½ cup of sake, 1 cup of mirin, and 2 cups low-sodium soy sauce. Stir this into the pan, kick up the heat, bring this to a boil and then reduce the heat to a slight simmer. Let this cook for an hour. Pick out the bones and strain through some cheesecloth.

This stuff is salty and amazing. I can’t wait to use it.

Take 4 cups oats (old-fashioned rolled), 1 cup chopped almonds, 1 cup dry roasted peanuts, 1 cup flaked coconut (unsweetened) and toss it together in a really big bowl.

Melt 1 stick of butter and stir in 1-1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2tsp salt and 1/2 cup honey. Pour this over the oat mixture and toss it all together by hand. Put this on a rimmed baking pan and put it into a 300 degree oven. Stir this on the pans every 10 minutes or so, until it is a nice even golden brown, probably 35 minutes.
While it is cooling, roughly chop the dried fruit: 1/2 cup each of golden raisins, apricots, cherries, and cranberries.
Once the oats are cooled, toss it all together in your big bowl and store in an airtight container. Eat it with milk or yogurt or ice cream.

Taken from the King Authur Whole Grain Baking book.

Bring almost 3 cups of water to a boil. I use less, I like my oats dryer. Dump in 1 cup steel-cut oats, some salt, 2 teaspoons each espresso and cocoa powder. Stir and bring it back to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until done. Maybe 20 minutes? Once most of the water is gone you can just turn it off, cover it, and let it soak up the rest of the water. It is also great to do the night before, it keeps in the fridge for more than a few days. Oh, once it’s all finished cooking, stir in 1 tablespoon of sugar. More if you like it sweeter. Or use honey. or whatever you like that is sweet. Eat this in the morning, plain or with nuts or coconut in it. Totally awesome.

Based on this recipe: Mocha Crunch Oatmeal.

This comes from Once Upon A Tart…, the cookbook, and the restaurant. Erin and I happened upon it when we were looking for breakfast in New York. We ordered some quiche and tart and this salad. I took a cameraphone pic of the book and could only decipher the ingredient list, so here is what I did with that:

Grate 3 or 4 medium carrots into a large bowl. Take a handful of mixed olives (about a cup, with pits) and pit and rough chop them and add them to the bowl. Finely chop almost a full bunch of cilantro and two scallions, into the bowl. Rinse and drain two cans of chickpeas, mix into the bowl. Stir this up really well, making sure all the ingredients are well distributed.

For the dressing, in a smaller bowl: One or two cloves of garlic, finely minced. the zest and juice of one lemon. 2Tbls ground cumin, 2tsp paprika, a strong dash of red cayenne, 2tsp salt, generous grind of pepper. Whisk this until combined. Whisk vigorously and add in 3Tbs of olive oil.

mix the dressing into the salad, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for an hour before serving.

1) cook noodles until almost done, drain and rinse cool
2) slice pork, cook in frying oil in high heat until cooked through
3) add sesame oil(s) with garlic, leek, and peppers. cook over high heat for 3 minutes, peppers should soften.
4) reduce heat and add noodles with soy sauce and sherry. stir-fry for 2 minutes
5) add beansprouts and continue to cook for 2 minutes. add water if noodles start to stick.
6) stir in the parsley and serve with toasted sesame seeds on top.

This is from a Thai & Southeast Asian cookbook I bought at Borders on clearance. It was delicious. I’m really glad I used spicy sesame sauce, it added the heat that I expect from any asian dish. And I probably wouldn’t use a pork chop in the future, it was a bit too tough. Maybe if I would have cut it properly, against the grain.