Unique Culinary Adventures

Big News From the 2011 National Oyster Cook-off

2011-10-17T10:40:00.039-04:00

It was totally unexpected and has never happened during the 32 years of the Lexington Park Rotary Club's and Maryland Department of Natural Resources Seafood Marketing Program's National Oyster Cook-off near Leonardtown, Maryland every third weekend of October at the St. Mary's County Oyster Festival. At this year's 2011 event on October 15, 2010, a single contestant, namely Loic Jaffres , a local, won every award available for him to take. Those awards were as follows:

Best in the Hors d'oeuvres category

Best Presentation

People's Choice for best overall dish

Grand Prize for best dish our of all three categories.

Spinach Wrapped Oysters Casino, as entered in the Hors d'oeuvres Category and pictured above were what did it. According to the recipe printed in the 32nd Annual National Oyster Cook-off cookbook, one might have expected a more traditional "casino" style presentation served atop an oyster shell. Serving them this way, however, could render a bit ponderous the tastings offered each year to dozens of spectators. Therefore, both spectators and judges, the latter holed up in a different building, received their Spinach Wrapped Oysters Casino in clear plastic cups as shown in our title picture. Just as well, better perhaps for Loic Jaffrey. Who's to say whether the French born Chef Jaffres, of Cafe des Artistes in Leonardtown, would otherwise have clinched "Best Presentation?" Interestingly, I didn't overhear the judges consider the discrepancy. Surely such an oversight did not relate to bias favoring local contestants. The judges, though provided with recipes, had no information regarding who the contestants were or where they were from. In any event, Chef Jaffrey's oyster dish pleased my palate enough that I ultimately intend to prepare it at home. Sometime thereafter, you can expect a close-up photograph accompanied by exclusive coverage here at Unique Culinary Adventures.

Hors d'oeuvres were but one of the three categories. Long before the cook-off, a different team of judges had selected the top three recipes plus numerous runner-ups from each category to be published in the 32nd Annual National Oyster Festival Cookbook. As it's been each year, this book is released at the Festival. The winner from each of the three categories is determined after the creators of the top three entries from each of the three categories prepare their treats live before a packed house at the Fairgrounds. Here are the entries that won second and third place from the Hors d'oeuvres category along with the top three from the Soups and Stews category and the Main Dishes category:

HORS D'OEUVRES

SECOND PLACE: Stuffed Oyster Stickers

by Mark Strejk of Milwaukie, Oregon

THIRD PLACE:

Oyster Puffs

by Thomas Faglon of Somerset, New Jersey

SOUPS and STEWS

FIRST PLACE

Marjoram Oyster and Baby Bella Soup

by Judy Armstrong of Prairieville, Louisiana

SECOND PLACE

Baltimore Oyster Chowder

by Ron Borowy of Arnold , Maryland

THIRD PLACE

Oyster Artichoke Bisque

by Rebecca S. Blake of Waldorf, Maryland

MAIN DISHES

FIRST PLACE

Oyster Pot Pie with Bacon Crust

by Amy Angelo of Pennsville, New Jersey

SECOND PLACE

Oyster and Black Bean Quesadillas with Cilantro Cream

by Ronna Farley of Rockville, Maryland

THIRD PLACE

Creamed Maryland Oysters in Pastry Shells

by Jack Campbell of Clacamas, Oregon

Sublime Duck tongues

2011-05-14T10:48:00.003-04:00

Word has reached me that the envelope pushing Sumile, a former hotspot for Franco-Japanese cuisine in Manhattan's West Village closed over a year ago. I visited Sumile in 2004, after reading in New York Magazine that duck tongues garnished one of the selections on its menu. An old notebook describes one of my choices from that night's small plate menu as having been "Miso cured brook trout, with seared crisp skin, almost raw with ginger pickled shallots and crispy duck tongue salad, the tongues fried to a crisp over slaw shredded cabbage mildy marinated with lemon juice or asian vinegar." As I recall, Sumile's duck tongues offered little substance.

The following year, here in the Baltimore area, I encountered a package of duck tongues at what is now H Mart at Rolling Road and Route 40. Unfortunately, at that time, neither an Internet search nor my vast library of cookbooks proved sufficient for finding a recipe for them. Thereafter, I never again observed duck tongues at H Mart, but recently scored some at Asia Supermarket, 5510 Baltimore National Pike, about 1/2 mile inside the Baltimore Beltway.

Also on Route 40, on the other side of the Beltway at 9180 Baltimore National Pike, the restaurant Asian Court offers on its menu a selection featuring duck tongues with chive flowers. I tried them with the intention of posting about the experience here at Unique Culinary Adventures, only to discover that Baltimore's own Minx had beat me to it. The Asian Court dish is pictured at left. It was all right, though the duck tongues were slimy and messy to eat.

However, using a simple and straight-forward preparation shared by Chichi Wang under "Nasty Bits" at the Serious Eats web site, I found duck tongues to be sublime ---addictive even. Anyone who likes chicken feet---I wont comment here on duck feet--- is bound to absolutely love duck tongues. Like chicken feet, the experience is about extracting luscious fat encased betweem thin cartilege and bone. Unlike chicken feet though, duck tongues needn't be messy. Each tongue is consumed with a single stroke where front teeth remove the cartilege and fat from a single bone that can then be put aside leaving nothing to spit out. Best of all, when prepared as Ms. Wang instructs, with a very thin coating of beaten egg white and cornstarch, a crisp exterior encases and traps their luscious substance.

Perfect as this recipe turned out, it's possible that a bit of seasoning or sauce might enhance them even further. Ms. Wang mentions "hints of curry like cumin or turmeric," as well as oyster sauce, Worcestershire sauce, "or anything else savory that's sitting in the cupboard." Coming up with the perfect combination of embellishments could prove to be an intriguing task and conceivably even a means for moving duck tongues closer to the culinary mainstream.

Live Blues, Louisiana Cookery, and Diversity on Harford Road

2011-01-17T12:55:00.014-05:00

To the best of my knowledge, Baltimore has never before seen the likes of the new Chef Mac's and All That Blues at 4709 Harford Road in Baltimore's Lauraville neighborhood.

To Maclonza Lee (aka Chef Mac), it's all about the food. He insists that his Louisiana style seafood, meat, and vegetables be fresh as well as freshly prepared. The menu for Tuesday through Thursday, noon til 8 p.m. , offers much the same fare as the menu from the former Chef Mac's Louisiana style carry-out several blocks south at 4311 Harford Road. On weekend nights, this menu gives way to buffet style (Cajun seafood on Fridays, prime rib on Saturdays)as top regional blues bands keep comfortably packed the spacious room previously the Parkside. To attract more business during the week, expect local jazz bands to soon be playing on Wednesday nights.

Recent blues acts have included Clarence "Bluesman" Turner (pictured at left), Charles "Big Daddy" Stallings, and Ursula Ricks. Twenty dollars best paid at the door upon entering to Chef Mac's leading lady and soul mate Leslie. covers the music and all you can eat from 7 p.m. until 11. For beer, wine, or liquor, it's BYOB. Unlimited set-ups are available for all who want or need them.

A bar lines the north wall at the front end with convenient perches for solo patrons. To the right of the bar are tables. Additional tables and, on Friday and Saturday nights, the buffet table graces the far end of the room. The stage where the band plays, with space in front to dance, comprises the center portion.

Particularly intriguing is the sociology of this uptown blues club scene. At just about all of Baltimore's other live music nightspots, the crowd is much younger. At Chef Mac's they're mostly 40 and older. Twenty years ago in Baltimore, the blues drew a younger crowd, mostly white folks. Now they're older, and their African-American peers, who once eschewed blues as music of oppression, have come to realize what they were missing. Bottom line: you wont find a more diverse crowd anywhere else in Baltimore. That's the way the patrons like it, and Lauraville is a perfect neighborhood for this to be happening.

The absence of a liquor license is not yet an issue with either Chef Mac or his rapidly growing clientele. Twenty dollars and BYOB with a full buffet along with this kind of music is a value that speaks for itself. Chef Mac admits that "the thought(of a liquor license) is there," but states: "My main focus is not that." For the time being, he says he'd rather hold onto his wallet and keep things as they are.

Chef Mac has not advertised. In fact, he's done little if anything to generate publicity. "I want people to find out about this place by word of mouth" he explains. "You see these places do all this advertising when they open up. Then they get a slew of customers and the service is bad. They don't know what they're doing yet."

Chef Mac's and All That Blues is a treasure not only for the Lauraville-Hamilton neighborhood, but for Baltimore. It very much needs more patrons during the week. On weekends, however, their number has grown by leaps and bounds. Last weekend, every table was filled. What evolves from all this will surely be interesting. There's nothing else like Chef Mac's and All That Blues in town.

Great Goat

2010-11-06T06:14:00.002-04:00

To begin with, I've never liked goat until now and over the past two years have shifted my blogging focus from food to rocks. Every once and a while, however, something comes along to ignite my culinary passions when time is available to photograph and write about it. The last such occasion involved duck tongues with chives flowers that Asian Court on Baltimore National Pike near Ellicott City was serving. Soon thereafter, however, I found where Baltimore's inimitable food-blogger, the Minx had beaten me to the quack.

However, to the best of my knowledge, no one else has yet uncovered this particular Caribbean goat curry dish, for which the recipe and main ingredient hail from Baltimore's Downtown Farmers Market. Arousing my curiosity was something I read several months ago that convinced me the goat meat from Jeanne Dietz-Band's Many Rocks Farm in Washington County was special and different. Particularly encouraging was that Jeanne's goats were free from animal hormones and antibiotics. Their diets, meanwhile, consisted of grass, locally grown barley, and soy.

I also suspect Jeanne's recipe for "Caribbean Goat Curry," had just as much to do with my extremely pleasant experience. It turned out perfectly on first attempt despite a couple of minor questions arising during preparation. Having asked Jeanne about them when returning the following week, here it is. Any deviation from the specifics of the recipe provided by Many Rocks Farm will be shown in Italics.

CARIBBEAN GOAT CURRY

1 pound Many Rocks Farm goat meat in small cubes. ( Jeanne sells meat cut into the proper sized cubes in approximately 1 lb. packages .)

Finely Grated Lime Rind and Juice (The grated exterior rind and juice of one Persian lime proved sufficient.)

2 Cloves Garlic Crushed

3 Tablespoons Oil (I used vegetable oil)

1 Medium Onion, Finely Chopped

2 Teaspoons Curry Powder (no specifics were provided. I used generic, and it worked fine.)

1 Teaspoon Cumin

1 Tablespoon Tabasco Sauce

2 Tablespoons Tomato Puree (Because some of the last really good local fresh tomatoes of the season were available at the farmers market, I removed the seeds and skin from one, ran it through the blender and used 4 tablespoons since the taste was milder than with a canned puree.)

2 Ounces Creamed Coconut (Use what has settled at the top of a can of unsweetened coconut milk and save the rest of the coconut milk for another purpose.)

1 Teaspoon Salt

2 Tablespoons Fresh Coriander (cilantro) Finely Chopped

Cooked Rice for Serving

Place the meat in a non-metallic bowl. Add the grated rind and lime juice along with the garlic. Stir well, cover, and marinate overnight in the refrigerator. In a large pan, heat the oil and cook the onions until soft. Remove onions. Sear meat on high heat until sealed. Lower heat and stir in the curry powder and cumin and cook for 1 minute. Add the Tabasco sauce, tomato puree, and creamed coconut and cook for 5 minutes. Add the salt and approximately 1 1/4 pints of water, and return the cooked onions---Jeanne's recipe didn't say to return the onions, but she agreed with me that this could be a positive---bring to a boil, cover and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, for 1 1/2 hours until meat is tender. Stir in fresh coriander and serve over hot rice.

Note: Do not despair that the consistency of the sauce with this curry is thin enough to be like soup. That simply makes it all the better, especially when served over plenty of rice.)

Talara: A Concept Baltimore Long Needed

2010-06-23T12:42:00.002-04:00

After 274 Unique Culinary Adventures posts, my blogging focus over the past year and a half has been far removed from delectable culinary esoterica. Rather, it's been about the hobby of mineralogy. Regardless, my interest in the former has in no way diminished, and I've missed being in the thick of everything.

Unique Culinary Adventures needed a push, and it came last week. What can I say when an operation like Nakturnal bestows the honor of shooting me an email out of the blue entitled, "Love 'Unique Culinary Adventures Blog! Can we Partner?" The only requirement was to enjoy a complimentary "tasting" at Talara.

Obviously Nakturnal's Charli Bales had read enough of our posts to have noted that ceviche was a favorite topic. Little did she know, however, that independently of blogging, I'd been hounding people in the restaurant business for over 20 years about the need for a ceviche bar in Baltimore. Finally, late last summer, one arrived when Talara opened its doors at the southeast corner of Fleet and President Streets. It didn't take me long to get to this instant hotspot with its multiple ceviche offerings and wonderful drinks. Of course, Talara is more than that. Nuevo Latino is the larger concept, with emphasis on tapas, especially ceviche.

The layout makes for quite a scene. Within a single neon lit space enclosed by floor to ceiling windows and walls featuring Cuban art are two bars, extensive counter seating, and plenty of both normal tables and high-tops. From the latter, patrons can observe everything from the preparation of ceviche to the crowd inside and out.

As for "bedidas," Mrs. Yi and I consumed between us over the course of the evening a blood-orange margarita, a caipirnha, a cucumber mojito, and a pisco sour. I've tried all these drinks at the relatively few other spots in town that offer them, and never enjoyed them more than at Talara. Also available is a good selection of beers and wines, plenty which are Spanish or Latino. Even better, during Talara's Baltimore Happy Hour, cocktails are priced at $5, a glass of wine is $4, and a beer $3. In addition, comes a happy hour menu of $5,00 tapas, including two of the selections we most enjoyed at our dinner (Shrimp and Tropical Fruit Seviche and Salmon Asian Tartare on Sushi Rice). Best of all is the happy hour time frame: from 4 to 7 Monday through Friday, and---get this---10 p.m. until 1 a.m. on Saturday night.

For both Mrs. Yi and me, the culinary highlight of dinner was a "seviche sampler" (spell it ceviche or seviche; either is correct). It is pictured above and features all seven seviche selections, for which patrons choose from the always fresh selection of seafoods available. The enormous variety of other ingredients comprising the various seviches are described in detail on Talara's menu. Shown clockwise from top left in the above image, we enjoyed the following:

Traditional seviche (crab)

Curried tropical fruit seviche (shrimp)

Asian tartare (aji)

Tiradito (salmon)

Avocado and corn seviche (diver scallop)

Fire and ice (conch)

Ginger Tataki (yellowtail)

While Unique Culinary Adventures often ignores what isn't new, undiscovered, unusual, overlooked, or forgotten, at least by local standards, Talara understands that here in Baltimore, it's good business to please as many people as possible. Even before our drinks , we were served a trio of chips (plantain, malanga, and tortilla) and salsa (black bean hummus, curried tropical fruits, and "house" (tomato et al). Then came a very basic but impossible not to like mini tostadas platter featuring chicken breast, beans, white cheese, and tomato salsa. The ceviche was next, followed by a "mid plate" (aka small entree). Mine was a wonderful filet mignon a la plancha (that means cooked quickly over very high heat on a salted griddle or iron skillet) with chimichurri sauce and accompanied by a wild mushroom saffron risotto, grilled asparagus, and Tempranillo (that's a Spanish variety of grape) demi glace. At $19 it was the most expensive item on the menu. Mrs. Yi raved about her chorizo wrapped diver scallops with roasted corn and goat cheese polenta, wilted spinach, and tamarind barbecue sauce.

Talara has introduced to Baltimore a concept that in other cities has evolved into a major culinary phenomenon. Just as when sushi first arrived here in 1980 at Shogun on Charles Street, it took a while for other players to jump into the game. That has not happened here yet. For sure, one reason why is because Talara is going to be hard to beat.

Oysters Savannah Pirates House

2010-01-06T12:36:00.002-05:00

I spent most of Christmas cooking dinner for the family members who each year descend on our Northeast Baltimore house at about 6 p.m. We started off with with an hors d'oeuvre of Oysters Savannah Pirates House, for which this post will share the recipe.

Next coursewas the conch chowder pictured at left, made with fresh Honduran conch purchased at Wegmans. Being low on bacon, we sustituted goose fat to start off the onions, garlic, conch, green peppers, celery, and carrots with a few pinches of dried thyme and oregano for sesoning. The broth consisted of a mixture of chicken stock (from cooking the chicken for chicken salad), bottled clam juice, and all the juice from the can of diced tomatoes that were added once the raw vegetables were somewhat cooked. The result was stupendous. Of course everyone added a little dry sherry and hot sauce to taste.

After the chowder came plates of Haitian grillots, chicken salad, and Bengalese cabbage as shown on the plate at right. Incidentally, the picture that accompanied our 2007 post with the recipe for grillots has become a hot destination on Flickr with 2,799 views thus far . It's also one of the most popular recipes ever posted at Unique Culinary Adventures. So is the Jake Slagle's chicken salad.

Here we're share our recipe for the Oysters Savannah Pirate house. It's different from several versions of similar title that appear on the Internet. Presumably the famous restaurant in Savannah with which they're eponymous has changed its preparation over the years. Our version is neither available elsewhere on the Internet nor in print, and most likely predates the others. It was inspired by a recipe that appeared in the March, 1977 Gourmet Magazine.

OYSTERS SAVANNAH PIRATE HOUSE

24 oysters, freshly opened on the half shell

1/2 pound raw bacon, finely

1/4 cup chopped green pepper

1/4 cup roasted red bell peppers, chopped

1 1/2 teaspoons Spanish paprika

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat a broiler. Combine all the ingredients other than the oysters. Place the oysters over rock salt in a pan that's suitable for broiling. Place approximately three inches below the flame and broil until the bacon is crisp, about 5 minutes.

Adapted from a recipe that appeared in the March, 1977, Gourmet Magazine

After practically shutting down during 2009, Unique Culinary Advanures plans to significantly reactivate in 2010 with at least one post each month.

Mrs. Yi's Fried Green Tomatoes

2009-10-18T10:04:00.005-04:00

Often, Mrs. Yi tends to make up dishes as she goes along. Her instincts are good. So it was with this fried green tomato dish with curry mayonnaise that she whipped up just the other night. Over many years, I've enjoyed fried green tomatoes prepared scores of ways. To my palate, these were the best yet.

Green tomato season is happening right now.. So it's been ever since the tomatoes in our back yard stopped growing in mid-September and began to redden sparingly. For the dish we're about to share, we plucked four small green tomatoes. They yielded about 15 one-third inch slices.

Here's the recipe:

MRS. YI'S FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

TOMATOES

4 small green tomatoes, or perhaps 2 large, or 3 medium
1 cup flour
1 3/4 teaspoon Lawry's Seasoned Salt
Canola oil
2 eggs
1/2 cup yellow corn meal

CURRY MAYONNAISE

1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon Indian curry powder
healthy squirt of lemon juice

Slice the tomatoes into 1/3 inch slices. Season 1 cup of flour with 1 1/4 teaspoon of Lawry's Seasoned Salt. Dip tomatoes in flour so they're well coated and put on a plate. Save the remaining flour. Meanwhile pour canola oil into a frying pan until 1/4 inch deep and place over moderate heat. Beat 2 eggs with a teaspoon of water. To the flour that's left, add the 1/2 cup of cornmeal and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of seasoning salt. Dip floured tomato slices in egg and then in cornmeal making certain they're well padded. Then fry them up in the heated oil til light golden brown and sure to be crisp, about 7 minutes, turning and testing as you see fit. Rest on a double folding of paper towels to drain. Mix the the three ingredients for the curry mayonnaise to be served on the side.

Returning with Lamb Ribs

2009-07-18T07:05:00.006-04:00

The last and most recent post at Unique Culinary Adventures, entitled "New Directions," happened eight months ago in November. As promised, we traveled while growing a non-food related business to critical mass. We anticipated being there in four months, it took eight, and the travel continues. Through this period we initiated and have faithfully maintained weekly posts at a new blog . Rather than being about food, it relates to that non-food business and is more about heralding the aesthetics of radioactive rocks than stalking scrumptious edible delights.

So now, Unique Culinary Adventures returns with a post and will continue posting if and when the urge strikes. It strikes full force here in mid-July, for sure the best time of year to enjoy the diversity of real food in this part of America. Notwithstanding, we resume with a post that would have been more likely to appear last winter had Unique Culinary Adventures been active. That's when I purchased lamb ribs from Virginia Lamb at the DuPont Circle Farmers Market in DC. Somehow they got lost for a few months in the back of our freezer. I suspect they're the Denver Style spare ribs featured on Virginia Lamb's web site, but our package simply read "lamb ribs.

Looking through plastic encasing them, it would appear nine or ten single ribs were inside. Enforcing this misperception were part of the instructions from a recipe on the Internet that practically made me drool. These instructions said to place the ribs on skewers if grilling them. I didn't understand. They were cross-cut so that approximately a dozen little one inch bones blocked the path of of every skewer. Forgetting the skewers, however, many ingredients and some of the techniques from this mouthwatering Cooks.com recipe contributed to one of the most killer main platters I've enjoyed all year. Here's the scoop:

Lamb Ribs

1 pound lamb ribs, cut crosswise across the bone

1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice

1 teaspoon grated onions

1 clove garlic, sliced fine

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1/8 teaspoon thyme, crushed

Pinch of seasoned pepper

Paprika for dusting

Chives and lemon wedges for garnish.

Mix lemon juice, grated onion, garlic, and a mixture of salt, dry mustard, chili powder, cumin, thyme, and seasoned pepper. Pour over lamb in a large shallow dish or pan. Cover and marinate in refrigerator 6 to 8 hours; turn occasionally. Remove spare ribs from marinade and place on rack in shallow roasting pan. Dust with paprika. Place in hot broiler 5 to 6 inches from the source of heat and broil for 16 minutes, turning 4 times and basting with marinade juices or until desired degree of doneness. Garnish with chives and lemon wedges to serve.

Serves 2.

New Directions

2008-11-20T16:17:00.001-05:00

For three years, Unique Culinary Adventures has been pretty much committed to publishing a post a week, and that's about to change. One reason is that a busy travel schedule over the next few months will make it unrealistic to offer a weekly "perspective from Baltimore, Maryland, on what's new, unusual, undiscovered, overlooked, or forgotten regarding food and drink."

This travel is necessary for growing a small nonfood-related business enterprise until it reaches a certain "critical mass." The expected time frame is four months, but who's to say, when you consider current economic conditions?

A blogging hiatus will also free up time to review the 260 features currently posted at Unique Culinary Adventures and polish up those occasional rough spots that make us cringe from time to time.

Just as likely, the Unique Culinary Adventures blog will resume sometime in the first half of 2009 with features very similar to those of the past three years.

About Ryleigh's Oyster

2008-11-09T09:02:00.001-05:00

"But when it comes to oyster bars, Baltimore is reviving. That renaissance took a huge leap forward with the the birth of Ryleigh's Oyster in 2007."

From Rowan Jacobson in an addendum to his definitive book The Geography of Oysters.

Despite the Chesapeake Bay oyster harvest's tragic decline, this is how Rowan Jacobson describes the way Baltimore is reclaiming its stature as an oyster mecca. The establishment known as Ryleigh's at 36 East Cross Street, which Jacobson credits with boosting forward that "renaissance," had been operating as a watering hole with food in the space where Sisson's previously evolved into Baltimore's first brew pub. The decision to reinvent itself as Ryleigh's Oyster proved auspicious.

The transition began a little over a year ago after Patrick Morrow (at right in the picture above), formerly a sous chef under Chef Chris Paternotte at Towson's now closed Vin, became executive chef and focused on oysters enough for the name change to Ryleigh's Oyster. Ever since, Chef Morrow has seen to the availability of at least eight of the 72 different branded raw oyster varieties served up here over the past year. Most are raised on oyster farms where the temperature and salinity of the waters in which they grow are subject to rigid control.

A couple good examples are the deep, firm, salty, and flavorful Glidden Points from Maine and the very salty, yet flavorful with sweet finish Raspberry Points from Prince Edward Island. Selections of each were shucked and presented to me to photograph by oyster bartender Josh Foti (pictured at left in the photo above). All too soon, they had become my first "comp" on behalf of Unique Culinary Adventures after I slurped them down before remembering to do the photograph.

Oysters have long been strictly seasonal in Bawlmer---limited to months bearing the letter r, when the harvest of wild Chesapeake Bay oysters is legal. That seasonality has continued in recent years despite the emergence of aquaculture and increased year-round availability of oysters from disease-free waters often in more northerly latitudes. All too often, between May and August, most oysters available in Baltimore at retail as well as in many restaurants, taste horrible.

The presence of Ryleigh's Oyster has significantly raised local awareness that things can be different. "We sold more oysters in the summer than we did in October," says chef Morrow. He also made a point of noting the delectablility of many oyster genre during May. That's because they're farmed in or harvested from waters that have yet to warm up so soon after the passing of winter. As a general rule, the colder the water, the better the oyster.

Very importantly, the variety of raw oysters available year-round has no less do do with the phenomenon Ryleigh's Oyster so quickly became than what has sprung than the bounty of its kitchen. One item by which I was very much taken was Panko Encrusted Fried Oysters-adobo aioli "mini cobb salad, (served with all its ingredients cooked on the half shell) . Having personally tasted and photographed the entries of all nine finalists in America's National Oyster Cook-off for each of the past three years, I have yet to sample a preparation that more intrigued me. "Is the recipe proprietary?" I asked. Patrick agreed to share it, after noting: "We kind of teach each other how to do it. Nothing is really written down." Having just slurped down instead of photographing a dozen Glidden Points and Raspberry Points, my instinct was to spare the likely disruption in the kitchen and additional block of Chef Morrow's time that teaching me would require.

Quite auspiciously, however, as we were discussing those "Panko Encrusted Fried Oysters-adobo aioli"mini cobb salad" Chef Morrow shared two tips about how to bread oysters of which I was unaware after years of frying them at home according to a myriad recipes. The first presented itself as Chef Morrow explained how he dredges his oysters directly into panko after removing them from their liquor. The rationale is that to first dip them in a wash such as eggs and/or milk ultimately detracts from a delicate oyster flavor profile. The second tip emphasized the importance of first opening an oyster's "lip" in order to bread not only the lip's exterior, but also its interior. Otherwise, during frying, the lip is likely to expand and open enough to detach a significant amount not only of breading, but also flavor bearing fluids. For me and I would suspect quite a number of oyster cooks, these tips could prove to be quite valuable.

Piri-Piri Makes Its Way

2008-11-02T12:56:00.002-05:00

You're looking at piri-piri chicken from Nando's (which uses the "peri-peri" South African spelling) with sides of spicy rice and excellent cole slaw. Nando's is a modern family type restaurant at at 810 7th Street NW in Washington, DC's Chinatown. It also sells five different versions of it own peri-peri sauce in bottles and enjoys a substantial carry-out business. Nando's is an international enterprise that originated as a restaurant opened during the 1970's in South Africa by former Portuguese colonists from Mozambique, where, as in the former Portuguese colony of Angola, piri-piri is much like curry is to India.

In the United States, awareness of the piri-piri flavor profile seems to be making its way in recent years from obscure older cookbooks toward the fringes of our culinary mainstream. Major credit goes to Nando's. My first encounter with Nando's peri-peri was at their booth during New York's National Association of Specialty Food Traders (NASFT) International Fancy Food Show the summer of 2006.

The most elaborate piri-piri delight I ever encountered was this Grilled Shrimp piri piri baby romaine garnished with cilantro, red onions and who knows what else. That was at Merkato 55 in Manhattan's Meatpacking District in conjunction with a dining experience shared in our September 24 post here at Unique Culinary Adventures.

Piri-piri is the name of a hot pepper, known also as the African birds-eye pepper, which is ubiquitous throughout the central African continent. A bit of research, however, has convinced me that just about any fiery hot red pepper will work just as well.

Cayenne in particular comes to mind. The chicken piri-piri at left was inspired by a recipe from The Africa News Cookbook that went so far as to cite everyday cayenne powder as suitable. Another unusual aspect of this recipe that especially pleased me was the idea of adding melted butter to a fresh batch of marinade ingredients for basting and then for dipping once the chicken has been grilled. Here's how I went about it:

CHICKEN PIRI-PIRI

1 Chicken, cut into serving pieces

8 Crushed red peppers or 4 heaping teaspoons of cayenne

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 cloves of garlic: crushed

12 sprigs parsley, chopped

1 cup butter to be melted

Juice of two medium sized lemons, juiced separately

Combine the chicken in a bowl with the juice of one of the two lemons half of the crushed peppers or cayenne, 1/4 teaspoon of the salt, 2 cloves of the crushed garlic, and 6 sprigs of the parsley. Stir around to mix well. Marinate for two hours at room temperature, or better refrigerated and covered overnight. Remove the chicken and combine any marinade remaining in the bowl with the melted butter and remaining peppers, salt, garlic, and parsley. Baste the chicken with the spiced butter and broil---or better grill---to desired level of doneness, basting occasionally. Serve with remaining spiced butter as a dipping sauce.

Marinade and sauce prepared according to instructions from The Africa News Cookbook, Copyrighted in 1985 by Africa News Service, Inc., Published by Penquin Books, New York

Pizza with Duck Cracklings in Alexandria

2008-10-26T08:24:00.002-04:00

The idea's been crackling away on my backburner ever since our March 24, 2007 post about Dominican Chicharrones de Pollo. When researching chicken cracklings on the Internet, I encountered a site that had nice things to say about a pizza spot in Manhattan which offered chicken cracklings as a topping for pizza. Though I never encountered that site again, a more recent search uncovered that the menu at Rustico, 827 Slaters Lane in Alexandria Virginia, offered something yet more intriguing: "duck confit and crackling pizza." Duck cracklings was one of the first items Unique Culinary Adventures ever covered, and word that an Alexandria restaurant was topping pizza with them, inspired me to drive south at the next available opportunity.

I was in for a treat. The duck confit and cracklings pizza was great, and so was Rustico and everything about it. Its beer menu features 50 draughts and 500 different bottled beers for which plenty of information can be had as to how best to pair them with food. Even better, the prices are extraordinarily reasonable. The cracklings and confit pizza that's pictured was $12. Notwithstanding very reasonable prices, Rustico's ambiance and space are plenty upscale, the latter graced by huge windows, intricate glass mosaics, marble tabletops, and more.

Soon Rustico will be cloning itself in Washington, DC. Should its management ever decide to do the same here in Baltimore, my prediction is that such an undertaking would almost immediately become one of the most popular restaurants in town and remain so indefinitely.

National Oyster Cook-off 2008

2008-10-19T15:56:00.002-04:00

Below are pictured the entrees ranked first second and third in each of three categories in the 29th National Oyster Cook-off, which took place on Saturday, October 19, 2008, at the St. Mary's County Oyster Festival in the St. Mary's County, Maryland Fairgrounds.

GRAND PRIZE WINNER AND ALSO

FIRST PRIZE HORS D'OEUVRES CATEGORY

Oyster en Brochette with Remoulade Sauce

from Brendan Cahill, Lusby, Maryland

HORS D'OEUVRES CATEGORY SECOND PLACE

Grilled Oysters with Prosciutto Brandy Butter

from Antoinette Leal, Ridgefield, CT

HORSD'OEUVRES CATEGORY THIRD PLACE
Southern Maryland Oysters Cafe
from Loic Jaffres, Leonardtown, MD

SOUPS AND STEWS CATEGORY FIRST PLACE
Oyster Barley Soup

from Michael Strejc, Milwaukie, OR

SOUPS AND STEWS CATEGORY SECOND PLACE

Oyster Etouffe

from Judy Armstrong, Prairieville, LA

SOUPS AND STEWS THIRD PLACE

Golden Oyster and Potato Bisque with Crispy Prosciutto and Chives

from Lisa Grant, Cherry Hill, NJ

MAIN DISH CATEGORY FIRST PLACE

Oyster Sandwiches with Lemon Tahini Sauce

from Michaela Rosenthal, Indio, CA

MAIN DISH CATEGORY SECOND PLACE

Burrito Style Ostiones Fritas

from Dawn L. Brown, Rosedale, MD

MAIN DISHES THIRD PLACE

Manicotti Stuffed with Oysters in Lemon Caper Cream Sauce

from Jack Campbell, Clackamas, OR

Culinary Bliss with Chinese Sausage

2008-10-15T14:41:00.002-04:00

Chinese sausage is a delight for which I have a serious propensity. It dates to my teenage years, when, lured by curiosity, I brought some home from a small ethnic Asian market near the corner of Maryland and North Avenues here in Baltimore. Unable to locate any cookbooks that offered information related to Chinese sausage, I fried some up (which isn't what you're supposed to do) and took a liking. My next experience with it was about 20 years ago when the menu at Bangkok Place on York Road in Govans featured it as the principal ingredient in one of several preparations of Yum.

Years later, I learned that rather than "fry up" Chinese sausage, it's best to steam it for fifteen minutes, let it cool, and slice diagonally prior to mixing and sometimes sauteing it with other ingredients.

Pictured above is a recipe from the July, 2007 Food & Wine for Lemongrass Salad with Chinese Sausage and Mango (and also watercress, cilantro, shallot, Thai chili, ginger, etc., etc.) As best I can determine, this is the first image of this dish to appear on the Internet. Its creator is the now legendary young chef Zak Pelaccio, whose cutting edge Malaysian culinary sensibilities contributed Fatty Crab and 5 Ninth to Manhattan's dining scene. No other Asian salad that I've ever tasted pleased me as much.

Jerk Pork

2008-10-08T09:05:00.002-04:00

This jerk pork was killer. It was promised in our post of September 10, and bears meek resemblance to the version referenced therein that Caribbean American Gourmet on West Lexington Street was dishing out from behind bulletproof glass. Thirty years have passed since I've tasted jerk pork as good as this. That was in the hills of Jamaica where scores of locals were gathered around a pimiento wood fire burning from a hole in the ground over which huge chunks of pork were grilling away. For this dish the Kingsford in our back yard would have to suffice, and it worked.

I'm convinced that considerable disillusion abounds about jerk pork and suspect some of it could have originated in Jamaica where numerous Rastafarian ideologies passionately condemn the consumption of any kind of red meat, particularly pork. In the United States, the disillusionment relates more to the misconception that that pork loin works as well as shoulder. Presumably that's because loin is leaner and healthier. Perhaps that's why jerk chicken and jerk fish have pretty much become mainstream United States staples, while jerk pork has not. Jerk is all about seasoning, and when the right mix of ingredients is blended, the flavor is hard not to like. My contention is that that pork butt is the best cut to bring up that flavor.

I've prepared numerous jerk recipes over the years, and this one from RecipeZaar easily surpasses them all. OK, the lemon wedge and scallion garnish were my own decorative touches, and yes I did substitute a couple of Thai peppers for the Scotch Bonnets just because we had some growing in the back yard, but so what? Here's a link to the recipe at RecipeZaar.

Fried Red Spanish Eggplant

2008-10-01T06:59:00.001-04:00

These red Spanish eggplants were purchased this past Sunday at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market in Washington, D.C., which which is open Sunday morning year round. As an habitue of our own downtown Baltimore Farmers Market since its incipience 20 or so years ago, making the run all the way to D.C was a stretch, but everything about the whole scene made the trip worth it. Totally upscale and very crowded though much smaller, The Dupont Circle Market reminded me more of San Francisco's Ferry Terminal Farmers Market than any other such market I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. The Dupont Circle Farmers Market is run by Freshfarm Markets, which is also responsible for seven other farmers markets in the Chesapeake Bay region, including the one at our own Harbor East on Saturday mornings. It's Freshfarm's largest with about 30 vendors, all of whom are regional producers. The prices, while a tad higher than here in Baltimore, are commensurate with the top-notch quality.

The red Spanish eggplants, of which I purchased a box of five for $3.50, were a treat I'd never before seen or heard of. Prior to posting, I did some research on the web and came up with very little beyond a couple of posts by bloggers who were as fascinated as they were curious about how to cook these beautiful vegetables. I cooked them according to the same basic recipe I would go with for any relatively small eggplant, and it worked great. Their red skin crisped distinctively and beautifully. The taste, flavor, and texture of the flesh was like that of any other small eggplant similarly prepared. Here's the recipe I've been using my whole life:

JAKE SLAGLE'S RED SPANISH FRIED EGGPLANT

Red eggplants--however many you need

flour

salt and pepper

oil

Slice eggplants into 1/4 inch slices, place in a bowl or on a plate, sprinkle with salt, toss, and then wait 30 minutes for them to sweat. Dry with paper towels and coat with flour that's been seasoned with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a skillet. Add the eggplant slices and fry over medium-high heat, turning once, so that the flesh on each side is browned but nowhere near burned. Remove with a spotted spatula to a plate or shallow pan covered with a double thickness of paper towels for a minute or two and serve.

Haute African Cuisine in New York

2008-09-24T15:19:00.001-04:00

Merkato 55, which features such African haute cuisine as the shrimp piri piri at left, has become a hot ticket in the what's next culinary mecca of Manhattan's Meatpacking District. Though New York Magazine notes sixty New York African restaurants, they're all pretty much local, ethnic, or have menus limited to a single country or region of the African continent. The majority feature Senegalese or Moroccan cuisine. Washington D.C. is home to numerous African restaurants on a similar scale. Most specialize in Ethiopian/Eritrean or West African cuisine. In New York as well as D.C., foodies have been flocking to these places for decades. Could the time be right for the evolution of America's acceptance of African delicacies to reach a new level? My hunch is that this will happen sooner rather than later and ultimately make its way to Baltimore.

I'm not able to imagine anyone more apropos for having a hand in launching such a trend than Marcus Samuelson, the chef behind Merkato 55. He's the Ethiopian born, Swedish raised owner/executive chef of Aquavit, Manhattan's high end mecca for Scandinavian cuisine. In recent years Samuelson traveled several times to Africa to explore his culinary roots as well as to research and later author Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa, John Wiley & Sons, 2006. What better encore for such an effort than Mercato 55?

It's located in the thick of Meatpacking District action at 55 Gansevoort Street. My son Alex and I had no problem getting reservations on two hours notice this past Monday night, perhaps because a lot of people didn't feel like spending and eating when earlier in the day our nation's financial system had edged ever closer to collapse. For that matter, it wouldn't have surprised me had we tried and been able to score a table at Babbo.

Pursuant to expectations, the decor at Mercato 55 proved intriguing to say the least. I was particularly impressed by the small bar that appeared perfect for accommodating solo diners like myself when unsuccessful at enlisting similarly adventurous dining companions while traveling.

A Karakaraba, mixed with Cazadores tequila, St. Germain liqueur, pineapple, Canton ginger, and lime was just the cocktail over which to unwind. It was followed by the piri piri shrimp appetizer pictured at the beginning of this post. Though consisting of but two shrimp, the combination of ingredients and flavors far surpassed any other piri piri dish I'd previously experienced anywhere. Alex opted for the tuna kitfo (tartar), pictured at right. The tuna was put together with chocolate, lemon, and who knows what else, then perched upon an avocado puree. I was amazed: the most delectable piri piri and the most pleasing raw tuna of my life within a half hour.

Berbere rack of lamb is a favorite recipe to prepare at home and was my choice as an entree. It's pictured at left and the only item with which Alex and I were less than happy. The idea was for us to share our respective entrees. We would have liked to have been able to enjoy at least two chops apiece, preferably three or four. To me "rack of lamb," when priced at $34, means more than three one-inch thick rib chops. Even worse, the level of Berbere flavoring seemed less than sufficient. Alex's entree was the shrimp and triggerfish preparation pictured at right. Like so much (except for the rack of lamb) that we enjoyed at Merkato 55, the magic was in the seasoning.

While Africa is a big continent with plenty of flavor profiles, I recognized most that were associated with our meal. They recalled relishes, sauces, rubs and other specialty food items I've sampled over many years at NASFT International Fancy Food Shows. If only more such products were available in Baltimore, or better yet a restaurant that could introduce us to a few of these wonderful tastes.

4 East Madison

2008-09-17T13:55:00.001-04:00

Oddly, perhaps, 4 East Madison was kind of off my radar even though its owners and operators are my friends and have been since it opened in 2002. Perhaps because they weren't pushing many culinary envelopes, I failed to consider how unique to Baltimore the experience of dining there could be.

Partners Betty Loafman and Sandy Lawler expanded into the restaurant business this past June without a lot of talk, promotion, or advertising. Since Four East Madison is primarily a bed and breakfast, most of its patrons were---and still are---from out of town. What they receive is the opportunity to enjoy life in Baltimore's Mount Vernon Place in a beautifully renovated historic setting.

For now, lunch in the garden is only served 11:30-2 Wednesday through Friday. Dinner is served 5-9 Thursday through Saturday. "I have to cook," is how Sandy explained the development of "feast @ 4 east." Since the beginning, Sandy's job has been to cook breakfast for the guests. She enjoyed her duties enough that she wanted to "keep on cooking and see what happened." Feast @ 4east has been recognized as Baltimore's "Best Summer Lunch Spot" as well as the city's "Best Bed and Breakfast" by City Paper

Mrs. Yi and I dined at feast @ 4east this past Friday, arriving shortly after 8 p.m. With most of the guests having already left, the din was low enough for us to blissfully groove to the recording of traditional New Orleans Jazz that was playing. The pleasant ambiance was completely different than at any other restaurant where we've dined in Baltimore. Since feast @ 43east is BYOB, we brought our own wine, which was promptly corked by a stylish and engaging young waiter from Seattle.

Feast @ 4east's menu accurately heralds "delightful food, sustainably sourced, prepared simply with a French Mediterranean flair." While not lengthy, it encompasses a range of choices to satisfy the culinary needs and preferences of just about anyone. Mrs. Yi and I sampled and thoroughly enjoyed a wide range of selections. My favorite was the "savory seasonal tart pictured above.

Hanging Out at the Lex

2008-09-10T15:30:00.001-04:00

Anyone who listened to the Sept. 8, 2008, Unique Culinary Adventures podcast knows about my favorite place in Baltimore for fried chicken, namely the Lexington Market. Wings such as pictured at left have been the main course for literally hundreds of lunches I've enjoyed there continually over the past 40 years. It doesn't matter which stall they're from. All five serve up pretty much the same thing at similar prices. The wings at left are from the Lexington Fried stall. To learn more, click the podcast icon at the top of this page.

It was fun to grab those three wings for a dollar a piece (three wing minimum at all the stalls). I took them to the upstairs area that overlooks the newer southern part of the East Market, and chowed down at what amounted to a balcony table from which to enjoy a lunchtime concert of New Orleans funk music by Baltimore's own Junkyard Saints. At some point, my eyes became focused upon the enlarged reproductions of old food labels lining the upper wall separating the Lex's upstairs and downstairs. A rendering of the label from a can of "silver hake" grabbed my attention. Silver hake happens to be the same fish that we Baltimoreans know and love as fresh breaded and fried lake trout even though most fishmongers will tell you that "lake trout," is "whiting," when in truth it's silver hake.

I'd never seen, heard of, or tasted the likes of canned silver hake. The instructions on the antique label poster said to drain the liquid from the can, put fish in a bowl. Add onions, peppers, vinegar, salt, and season to taste. Mix thoroughly with a little mayonnaise and serve with lettuce on a platter. The same instructions also noted that this canned hake could be served "fried or boiled in whole pieces just as removed from the can or made into delicious fish cakes."

Next to Silver Hake was an enlargement of the label for a can of Bull Head Oysters from Mavar Shrimp & oyster Ltd. in Biloxi, Mississippi. Something about that label struck me as familiar. It seemed to quite resemble a label in which another Biloxi packer, the Aughinbaugh Canning Company, once encased cans of its Negro Head Oysters, such as the one pictured at right that I managed to retriece from the storage area of my basement. I really should get rid of it. Unopened cans of such vintage are known to explode occasionally due to a spontaneous combustion type phenomenon. My reason for acquiring it quite a number of years ago had far less to do with oysters within than a label that was clearly over-the-top. Not long I'd purchased it, Mrs. Yi moved in and in a nod to political correctness, removed the can from where anyone might see it.
After leaving the East Market, I walked along the 500 block of West Lexington Street, where for years and years the ambiance has been about as close to Middle Eastern/Third World as you'll find in the immediate area. Quite intriguing to me was a sign outside Caribbean American Gourmet heralding jerk pork as "new." So in I went to purchase a pint container of it for $6.95 through the bullet-proof glass. While dozens of local Caribbean spots offer jerk chicken and/or jerk fish, not many have jerk pork. My several trips to Jamaica years ago had always led me to believe that pork, not chicken or fish, best defined what the jerk phenomenon was really about. I suspect that jerk chicken and fish are more prevalent hereabouts simply because they can be prepared in almost any kind of kitchen. On the other hand, Jamaican aficionados have told me that at its best jerk pork should be barbecued on slabs of pimiento wood over a fire built into the ground. Most of the recipes for jerk pork that I've been able to source on the Internet would seem oblivious to this. Worse, they say to use pork loin. Believe me when I tell you shoulder meat is preferable, the fattier the better. That's what I believe Caribbean-American Gourmet was using, which was the good news. The bad news was that it appeared to have been cooked up in a pot like a stew. After all, Caribbean American Gourmet is hardly in a part of town that lends itself to building fires in the ground. But on my grill, I think I'd like to try it some time and see what happens.

Jarocha Clam Soup

2008-09-03T09:30:00.001-04:00

Back in my days with Denzer's Food Products, I almost canned this. It would have happened save for an unexpected development that led instead to canning Denzer's Maryland Crab Soup. That decision ultimately generated enough sales volume to subsidize the Denzer's line's four other more exotic soups and chowders. Possibly a good thing considering the mass conditioning in the U.S. toward the either/or proposition of creamy (Boston) clam chowder or the tomato based (Manhattan) clam chowder.

Jarocha clam soup is tomato based, but without potatoes, thus no more a chowder than it's associated with Manhattan. The recipe is from Vera Cruz, Mexico, where the term "Jarocha" refers to its people and culture.

The inspiration was a recipe from a long out of print cookbook, Good Food from Mexico. It's authors were Watt Mulvey and Luisa Maria Alverez. The book was first published in 1950, approximately a half-century before "authentic" Mexican cuisine became popular in the U. S. Simple as this concoction might seem, I've never observed a soup anything like it on a menu or encountered another recipe that's even vaguely similar.

We chose to share it this week because fresh juicy tomatoes are still in peak season. The original recipe called (presumably) for fresh tomatoes---or "chopped tomatoes, boiled and strained." That's how it was done for the above photograph. However, we only boiled our very juicy fresh tomatoes for 13 seconds in order to easily peel off the skin before chopping and straining them. In the past, rather than strain, I would simply to peel the tomatoes, chop them up and insert them when called for. Both techniques yielded equally pleasing results. The tomato seeds never bothered me a bit.

JAROCHA CLAM SOUP

2 cloves of garlic

4 tablespoons olive oil

3 medium Spanish onions, peeled and chopped

3 medium sized tomatoes, skinned and chopped*

18 large cherrystone clams, steamed, with broth reserved

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

Brown garlic in hot oil, pressing with a fork to extract flavor. Add onions and brown lightly. Add tomatoes, which have been boiled and sieved, and fry together about five minutes. Turn into a kettle, add the clams, one quart of the clam broth, salt, pepper, and paprika. Simmer covered one hour. Serves six.

*To skin tomato, drop into rapidly boiling water for 13 seconds (no more) and remove. Skin will peel right off.

Behind Tark's Success

2008-08-27T15:56:00.001-04:00

One might think that Billy Shriver is a magician or has some kind of secret. He's the managing partner of Tark's Grill at Green Spring Station, which opened this February, became an instant Baltimore County hotspot, and has remained so ever since. The bar and dining areas are attractive. Tark's menu lists classic American fare of top-notch quality at reasonable prices. Is all that enough to make it in today's economy?

When I asked Tark's managing partner, Billy Shriver, he hammered away at two other points: an obsession with seeing that guests are pleased and "the best location in the Baltimore area."

Shriver has enjoyed success in the restaurant business before. He started out in the 70's working at the Crease in Towson. In 1979, when the economy was headed in much the direction it is today, he co-founded the Mount Washington Tavern, which like Tark's became popular immediately. In 1985, he accomplished much the same at the Harryman House in Reisterstown. A few years later, he did it again at the Milton Inn. When exorbitantly expensive upgrades to the historic premises became necessary, he left and went to work for 14 years at the California based public restaurant chain Grill Concepts as a general manager and later as area director. In that role, he opened a number of restaurants that he describes as being similar in many ways to Tark's.

Needless to say, with any public company, profitability is the principal determinant of success and is typically achieved through tested and well-formulated principles, operations, and execution relating to all aspects of the business. Shriver credits Grill Systems' retired CEO Bob Spivak as his mentor in that respect.

The most important lesson learned from Spivak, he says, was the importance of keeping the guests---"they're not customers, they're guests"---happy. Tark's mission, prominently displayed on its website, chose the adjective "legendary" for describing the level of guest service to which Tark's aspires. "The answer is yes: What''s the question?" is a phrase Shriver is fond of repeating.

He explains the caliber of the employees Tarks has managed to recruit and retain as key. They figure prominently into a mission that calls for "treating our employees as family." It certainly doesn't hurt, for example, to have a general manager with Mark Hoffman's experience and a persona the likes of Kevin Sweeney tending bar.

It's also notable that Tark's three other partners, Terry (Tark himself) Arenson, Gary Gill, and Scott Steele are prominent Baltimore area businessmen, who frequent the restaurant and meet together with Shriver on a regular basis to assess every aspect of the operation. Just as significantly, all the partners are well-connected in a lot of social as well as business circles around town. This has proven helpul both in finding just the right employees--- many of whom are similarly well-connected---and attracting guests, who attract more guests.

"People like it when they know we're here and that we're making a point of looking out for them," says Shriver.

Anchovy-stuffed Heirloom Tomatoes

2008-08-20T10:15:00.000-04:00

The recipe upon which this delight is based preceded mass public awareness (in the United States, at least) regarding heirloom tomatoes, the kind of marinated white anchovies I purchase at Mastellone's on Harford Road), as well as potato bread. Anchovy-stuffed tomatoes have been a summer staple at the Slagle table every summer for well over thirty years. Recently, we've elevated the experience to a whole new level.

Love them aplenty, but beware those big heirlooms as well as large beefsteaks when harvested in peak season and fully ripe. They can fall apart in the process of being temporarily hollowed out, stuffed, refilled, and baked. Surely firmer and more spherical tomatoes were what the New York Times intended for the "anchovy-stuffed baked tomatoes" recipe it published in the 1950's. In place of the six "large" tomatoes, we substituted two humoungous heirlooms while leaving the other ingredient quantities constant. We've also specified marinated white anchovies for "anchovies" that 50 years ago, even the Times probably considered to be the salty filets packed into small cans with olive oil that you get at the supermarket. Likewise, we chose potato bread in place of those "slices (of)crumbled bread" in the Times' recipe.

Simply having that wonderful heirloom tomato flesh as the stuffing's principal ingredient was more than enough in itself to much enhance an already great recipe. As for the very real possiblilty of huge ripe heirloom tomatoes falling apart along the way, I'm quite confident that encasing them in aluminum foil ---to be removed prior to serving---would do the trick. Unfortunately, I neglected to so wrap the other heirloom, much distracted by the pleasure and opportunity of using for the first time a new Mario Batali casserole dish (actually a miniature Dutch oven). For that matter, I'll bet Mario would love what we put in it.

Here's the recipe:

ANCHOVY-STUFFED HEIRLOOM TOMATOES

2 large heirloom tomatoes

2 slices crumbled potato bread, crusts removed

1 7-ounce can of tuna, drained and flaked

6 filets white anchovies marinated in vinegar

1 small clove garlic, finely minced

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

salt to taste

3 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

3 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat oven to 375 F. Cut the tops from the tomatoes and discard. Scoop out the pulp and mince it. To the tomato pulp, add the bread, tuna, anchovies, garlic, and basil. Mix well. Salt the tomato cups lightly (you may want to encase them in aluminum foil if concerned they could fall apart) andfill them with the mixture. Toss the cheese in the butter until well mixed and sprinkle over the top. If concerned the tomatoes could fall apart, encase them in aluminum foil before placing in an oiled baking dish or casserole to bake for about 20 minutes.

Old School Baltimore Smelts

2008-08-13T14:34:00.000-04:00

Typically about the size of sardines, fresh smelts are inexpensive and quite mild. In the Baltimore area, I've never seen them listed on a menu. However, from time to time, various local fishmongers and quite a few supermarkets will have them on ice appearing fresh.

Most likely, they will be previously frozen, sometimes split, and usually with heads off. Mrs. Yi, who fished for them as a child on a lake in northern Maine, has always contended that the smelts I bring home aren't as fresh-tasting as she would prefer. Like me, she has reservations about purchasing any fish whose eyes and gills are no longer available to be checked out. I once found some smelt at the International Market in Baltimore's Security Square Mall with heads on and eyes clear, and they tasted no different.

Because most smelt recipes call for frying, I was intrigued by this one for "BROILED SMELTS MAITRE D'HOTEL." It was adapted from a recipe once popular at Baltimore's long defunct Southern Hotel. Contibuted by "managing director A. J. Fink," it is from Frederick Philip Steiff's 1932 cookbook, Eat, Drink, and be Merry in Maryland.

BROILED SMELTS MAITRE D'HOTEL

When purchasing your smelts, find out as much as possible as to when they were thawed, or if fresh, where they came from and when. If satisfied, purchase however many smelt you wish to prepare. The Southern Hotel recipe calls for six large smelts, presumably good for a single serving.

smelts

olive oil

paprika

fresh bread crumbs

butter

parsley

lemon

If smelt are not already split, split them and remove the backbone, then dry with a paper towel. Generously add paprika to enough olive oil in which to dip all the smelts. Dip the smelts into the olive oil and then into the breadcrumbs. Broil close to the flame until breadcrumbs are golden brown. Top with butter that has been melted with finally chopped parsley, and if wished, add a slice of lemon and a spring of parsley.

Adapted from Eat, Drink, and be Merry in Maryland compiled by Frederick Philip Stieff, copyrighted by the author 1932, G.P. Putnam and Sons, New York.

Amazing Morel Mushrooms in August in Baltimore

2008-08-06T11:11:00.000-04:00

When's the last time you saw morels like this in Baltimore in August for fifteen bucks? That large one's five inches long, big as I've ever seen.

"This is the last of them," Ferial Welsh told me at The Mushroom Stand this past Sunday at Baltimore's Downtown Farmers Market. As far as I'd ever known, the morels were gone by the end of May. Apparently that's not the case in Oregon, where these came from. Last week the Mushroom Stand had fresh truffles from France with some fairly large ones going for $25. Maybe they had truffles this week as well, but not needing any, I didn't ask. Business was humming, and I didn't want to distract.

Knowing how to cook morels is extremely important. It's really quite simple as long as you keep them dry. Best to slice them in rounds about 1/3 inch thick and then simmer them in table cream until the cream thickens. Whatever you do, don't saute morels, as that robs them of their distinctive and delicious flavor. Properly prepared, fresh morels are a true delicasy.

Chesapeake Hard Crabs Fried Up Spicy Hot

2008-07-23T14:26:00.000-04:00

Fried Chilli Crabs: I've been doing this for three decades. The local food scene has changed during that time, enough perhaps, for a preparation like this to find its place in the Baltimore dining scene within a couple of years. Chilli crabs have long been extremely popular in Singapore and Malaysia. The Vietnamese favor a slightly milder version of fried crab, which is on the menu at some Vietnamese restaurants and not unlike the fried crab quarters one sometimes finds at local suburban Asian cafeterias. What's pictured above is entirely different and pleases my tastebuds even more than our Maryland steamed crabs.

In Singapore and Malaysia, of course, the species of crab used is obviously different than our Atlantic blue crab. The meat, however, tastes much the same. Where do you think that more than 50 per cent of the crab meat consumed in Maryland comes from anyway? It's what Phillips Food, which is headquartered here in Baltimore, imports enough of from Indonesia to supply approximately 80 per cent of the US market.

My original recipe was from Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook, which was published in 1976. The Essential Asian Cookbook, published in 1999 by Whitecap Books includes slightly different version. Recipes for chilli crabs vary, just as they do for "Maryland Steamed Crabs." With steamed crabs, the differences relate mostly to seafood seasoning; with fried chilli crabs, it's chilli sauce.

For perspective let me share a bit of personal history. Thirty years ago, I was a home improvement broker who happened to be an adventurous eater and home cook. At that time of my life, unless otherwise specified, "chilli sauce" could just as well be Heinz Chili Sauce when referred to in a cookbook as "chilli" sauce, especially when a recipe for shrimp on the same page went farther to specify"Chinese chilli sauce." As a Baltimore native of that era, I gave Heinz Chili Sauce the nod. Surprisingly it worked great, however different the American mainstream Heinz product might have been from what Ms. Solomon probably intended. For the version pictured above, I used Yeo's Sweet Chilli Sauce from Malaysia, that was purchased at the Thai-Philippine market on Gorsuch Avenue in Waverly. That's because "sweet chilli sauce" was what the later Essential Asian Cookbook called for. It worked fine, but even so, next time, now more curious than ever, I'll be trying the Heinz again for perspective.

Here's the recipe:

FRIED CHILLI CRABS

2 live jumbo Maryland hard crabs

1/2 cup peanut oil

2 teaspoons freshly grated fresh ginger

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

3 fresh red chilli's, seeded and chopped

1/4 cup plain tomato sauce

1/4 cup chilli sauce---read about this above

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon light soy sauce

1 teaspoon salt

white rice

Wash crabs well, scrubbing away any mossy patches on the shell. Remove hard top shell, stomach bag and fibrous tissue, but reserve any fat or "mustard." With a cleaver, chop crab into 4 or 6 pieces. Heat a large wok or frying pan. Add oil and when the oil is very hot, fry the crab pieces until they change colour, turning them so they cook on all sides. As they begin to change colour, add any reserved fat or "mustard." Once colour has changed, remove to a plate. Turn heat to low and fry the ginger, garlic, and red chillies, stirring constantly, until they are cooked but not brown. Add the sauces, sugar, soy sauce, and salt, bring to a boil, and then return crabs to the wok or frying pan and allow to simmer in the sauce for 3 minutes, adding very little water if sauce reduces too much. Serve with white rice.

Mrs. Yi's Pimm's Cup Drink

2008-07-16T13:07:00.000-04:00

Above is a Pimm's Cup concoction in a crystal beer mug substituting for a cup. Poured from a pitcher and with all the fruit, it could work as an alternative to Sangria. Mrs. Yi made up a batch to contribute to the Indian Food Bash last March in our Northeast Baltimore neighborhood. Mrs. Yi's Pimm's Cup was mentioned at the conclusion of the post that followed ending with the words "Stay tuned."

The hot weather is here, so it's time. To prepare a large pitcher, Mrs. Yi played with a recipe for preparing four individual glasses that originally appeared in a Cook's Magazine dating from 1987. Her intention was to multiply the called for ingredients, but what resulted proved to be new, different, and more pleasing to me than over a half dozen published techniques I've since experimented with. The reason, I believe, relates to all the extra fruit for which there's room when the quantity is enough to merit using a large pitcher.

The definitive ingredient is Pimm's Cup #1, which is gin-based and likely the only Pimm's Cup variety available in liquor stores---at least here in the Baltimore area. While the formula for Pimm's Cup #1 is a carefully and effectively guarded trade secret, recipes for making drinks with it are ubiquitous. Typically, one part of Pimm's Cup #1 is mixed with with five or six parts lemonade, Gingerale, 7-Up or a combination of lemonade and such a soft drink, then garnished with a cucumber spear and perhaps a slice of citrus and/or some mint. However done, it makes for a very refreshing drink, particularly in hot weather.

The recipe from which Mrs. Yi's version evolved was more elaborate but no trouble. It called for sqeezing 1/3 cup of fresh orange juice and two tablespoons of lime juice, combining these juices with 8 ounces of Pimm's Cup#1, a pint of Club Soda, and two teaspoons of sugar, pouring it all into four glasses bearing citrus slices and ice, then garnishing with a cucumber wedge, perhaps a slice of fruit, and/or a sprig of mint . That's a pretty good technique, but the result gets better when all these ingredients---and a bit more---are thrown into a pitcher.

Here's Mrs. Yi's recipe:

MRS. YI'S PIMM'S CUP

8 oranges

8 limes

1 cucumber

1 apple

1 lemon

2 tablespoons sugar.

1 bottle of Pimm's Cup #1

6 cups Club Soda

Squeeze enough of the oranges to yield 8 ounces of juice, discarding the squeezed oranges and saving those remaining. Squeeze enough of the limes to yield 2 1/2 ounces of juice, discarding squeezed limes and saving those remaining. Cut remaining unsqueezed oranges and limes, the lemon, the apple, and the cucumber into slices and throw into a large pitcher. Mix the orange juice, lime juice, Pimm's Cup#1 and Club Soda, and sugar together and add to the pitcher with the fruit. Let stand for at least a few minutes and then pour into glasses or cups over ice.

Best of the Beach

2008-07-09T12:42:00.000-04:00

Pictured above is corn on the cob, from Agave Mexican Grill and Tequila Bar in Lewes, Delaware, at 137 Second Street, along the town's tastefully preserved main strip. Awash in chipotle mayonaisse and crumbled Mexican cheese, it was first parboiled, then finished off with five minutes or so on the grill. The menu lists it for $3.

Having not made it to any established and dependable meccas like the Back Porch in Rehoboth, this was the culinary highlight of seven days at the beach. I wouldn't have known about Agave except for the scoop in Baltimore's recent Style Magazine. The space is small, modern, upscale, and dark with ten seats at the bar and about as many tables. A little after five p.m. seemed a good time to be there before things got busy after a reasonably sunny and pleasant beach afternoon. Because later commitments once again made things all too busy on my end, time limited me to this one light and delicious snack. A large $10 house margarita made with El Jimador proved perfect for washing it down. I share Washington Post writer Fritz Hahn's assessment of the same concoction as "the finest I've ever had at the beach," My only disappointment was no mezcal presence amidst more than seventy tequilas on hand.

So much for one week at the beach, though more could follow in the next Unique Culinary Adventures podcast. On the downside, my dining out experiences this week produced more than their share of abominable meals---and drinks---as compared to past summers. My conclusion is that 2008 is a tough year at the beach for a lot of restaurants, and that many of them probably wont make it. I believe however, that Agave, could prove to be one of but a very few new ones destined to become a hotspot and go on to pass the test of time.

The Culinary 4300 Block of Northeast Baltimore's Harford Road

2008-07-02T17:47:00.000-04:00

The trend used to be that artists of limited financial wherewithal would "discover" an urban neighborhood. Their presence tended to make the area more "hip." Revitalization often followed.

In much the same manner, young entrepreneurs adapted the commercial strip lining the east side of the 4300 block of Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore. Their businesses were about food and drink. They made the neighborhood more "hip," and revitalization followed.

A good case could be made for crediting the beginnings of it all to Koco's Pub at 4301 Harford Road. That was approximately a decade ago, somewhere between when Koco's began serving its humoungous lump crab cakes, and the local media took notice.

In 2002, Chameleon Cafe at 4341 Harford Road, was next. Co-owner and chef Jeff Smith brought classic French technique to the preparation of regional dishes that changed with the seasons. His wife Brenda assumed the role of hostess, maintained the books, and curated displays of art on the walls. The art changed as frequently as the menu. Thus the name Chameleon. Soon after it opened, Chameleon became a destination spot for gourmands from throughout the Baltimore area. In the process, a new and continuing citywide positive awareness of the neighborhood was created, and they just keep coming
.
With a good corner bar famous for its crab cakes at one end of the block and a fine dining hotspot at the other, the Red Canoe Coffeehouse and Childrens Bookstore opened in between in 2004 at 4337 Harford Road to the benefit of all concerned. The Red Canoe quickly established itself as a magnet for residents from a cluster of surrounding communities, none of which had previously enjoyed either the benefits of a coffee house or a place to go out for lunch (which Red Canoe soon began serving) where the presence of their kids was encouraged. In little time, the Red Canoe had become a friendly local meeting place, hangout for residents of all the neighboring communities, and a child literacy lightning rod.

Things got even better when Zeke's Coffee set up shop shortly thereafter around the corner at 3003 Montebello Terrace. It conributed an enormous selection of world class coffee beans as well as a roaster. Zeke's soon expanded its presence and became yet another citywide phenomenon. Proof is in the omnipresent lines at Baltimore's Downtown Farmers Market, 32nd Street Farmers Market, and the Mill Valley Garden Center.

More was yet to come with the arrival in 2006 ofAlabama Barbecue Company at 4311 Harford Road. With just a couple tables and a small counter inside, everything served (including potato chips) was and continues to be prepared on premises. The meat is slow-cooked over hardwood charcoal and logs. Alabama Barbecue goes to great lengths to distinguish itself from other barbecue joints. It uses an Alabama white sauce on its pulled chicken and a raspberry glaze for its ribs. The rich deserts have been described in reviews as "irresistible.

Who knows what's next? Most recently, its' been small retail businesses, namely a knitting store, a candy store, and a jewelry store. The influence has now spread to several Harford Road commercial corridors a few blocks north. The creative fare at Clementine, 5402 Harford Road has been packing them in now three meals a day for several months. You can also read about the soon to open Hamilton Tavern and The Parkside Fine Food and Spirits in earlier posts here at Unique Culinary Adventures.

Pushing the Envelope in Alexandria, VA

2008-06-25T13:41:00.000-04:00

Having not visited Alexandria, Virginia, in years, the prospect doing so beckoned. Last Friday, on the spur of the moment, a three hour opportunity arose in mid-afternoon. My appetite was ravenous, and lunch hour had passed. An evening commitment in Baltimore precluded dinner there.

Most of my time was spent walking and taking in Alexandria's historic waterfront, architecture, and restaraunts, especially those serving at this hour. The three block stretch of King Street between my parking space and the waterfront offered numerous choices. Within minutes, I was seated at an upscale Thai spot and had ordered from its reasonably appealing menu a whole rainbow trout stuffed with herbs and lemongrass. With two minutes of additional walking, I would have chosen instead to try the fast Ethiopian fare at the Torpedo Factory Food Pavillion near waters edge.

More on my mind, however, was a different kind of African influence I'd recently read about in conjunction with Farrah Olivia on the plaza by Balducci's at 600 Franklin Street. The article was about its Ivory Coast born owner/chef, Morou Ouattera, whose culinary sensibilities had a reputation for penetrating a lot of fringes. Despite the need to be back in Baltimore by 7:30, I was determined to at least have a look.

At 5:30, when Farrah Olivia opened its doors for dinner, I took my seat at the small bar near the entrance. Having been walking for two hours, I was eager to check out the menu over a refreshing cocktail. Any lack of a cocktail menu became a non-issue once the bartender had mixed and served me a glorious mojito. From its main menu, I would describe Farrah Olivia's cuisine as lending an African perspective to a broader Modern European/American genre in a unique and adventurous manner. Among entrees, the most expensive was "lamb chop/plantain loaf/white mint *caviar*/palm fruit bbq" for $34. Least expensive was "soft-shell crab/pickled tapioca/melon fruits/bok choy mustard," the smaller portion (presumably one soft-shell) for $18.

Time restricted me to but one quick treat: the gazpacho pictured above. It was listed as "painted gazpacho/curried eggplant/vine ripe tomato/cucumber." Checking Farrah Olivia's menu on the web several days later, I observed a "painted soup/silky chestnuts/ginger squash/beet cider," but no such gazpacho, so who knows? Regardless, after visiting Farrah Olivia's website and searching out some of the numerous reviews, anyone should have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

For me, it's a matter of when, not if, to make a special trip back to Alexandria and further experience what Farrah Olivia is about. Should its fourteen course tasting on Friday and Saturday nights with reservations required be excessive, also offered are five and seven course tastings for $55 and $75 respectively. I only wish Farrah Olivia were closer by and wonder how Baltimore would respond to the likes of it.

Boiled Maryland Hard Crabs

2008-06-18T13:30:00.000-04:00

As a third generation aficionado of Maryland steamed crabs, I decided to boil up rather than steam this dozen after purchasing them for $18.00 at Baltimore's downtown farmers market. Accustomed to enjoying my hard crabs doused with Old Bay and steamed over a boiling mixture of beer and vinegar, I was ready to try a different approach.

Hard crabs are boiled by default in every other state I'm aware of but Delaware. The other exception is where some Asian restaurants around the country cook them in a well-oiled wok or large frying pan with various spices, vegetables, herbs, and condiments. The mix can vary from ethnicity to ethnicity, and restaurant to restaurant.

At the four or five regional spots where I've enjoyed boiled hard crabs in Virgina and North Carolina, melted butter, vinegar and Old Bay were served on the side for dipping the meat. For me these enhancements proved as critical to the experience of eating boiled crabs as Old Bay is to enjoying our steamed crabs here in Maryland. Discretion is important when ordering boiled crabs. A lot of cooks boil them til they're mushy. Some restaurants (I know this happens a lot in Louisiana) boil all the crabs they expect to sell over a period of time and then refrigerate them for long enough (for more than 24 hours) to lose the delectable freshness that's definitive of hard crabs as we know them here in Maryland. Often they're later reheated, sometimes enough so to further increase the likelihood they'll be mushy. Heaven forbid that any Maryland establishment would even think of trying to pull something like this.

Whether boiled or steamed, freshness and cooking time are the most important considerations. In Maryland, when purchasing cooked hard crabs, we know to expect they'll be steamed, their shells coated with a significant quantity of Old Bay. For any Marylander interested in trying them another way, here's my recommendation:

BOILED HARD CRABS

Fill a deep pot with water to whatever level the number of crabs to be boiled would pile up to reach, but don't put them in. Add salt and any desired seasoning to the water. Bring water to a boil. Once at full boil, drop in your crabs (alive, of course) head first. When the water returns to a full boil, leave uncovered and cook for an additional six to twelve minutes, depending upon the size of the crabs, until their top shells have turned a bright red. Remove and place immediately under cold water, throwing on some ice perhaps, to stop the cooking process. Accompany with separate small containers of melted butter, vinegar, and seafood seasoning.

Next to Open on Harford Rd: Hamilton Tavern

2008-06-12T11:41:00.000-04:00

When it comes to exciting new places opening up in Baltimore, Harford Road through Hamilton and Lauraville has become the hottest area in town. The next spot to look for sometime in July is the Hamilton Tavern at 5517 Harford Road at the corner of Wisteria Avenue. Don't expect it to be like the Hamilton Tavern that previously occupied the space.

The owner of the both the building and now its liquor license, which permits carry-out, is Tom Creegan. He is also one of five owners as well as a working partner at Brewers Art. Assisting him with major, fast-moving, and on-track renovations is his wife Felicia who will oversee the business end of the new establishment. The chef will be Sarah Thall, formerly of Maggie Moore's. Ron Foster will be in charge of the front end.

"We've always wanted a local bar," says Creegan, "with a little bit better selection of beer." Resurrection Beer, made famous at Brewers art, will be one of five North American craft brews to be offered on tap. Also available will be spirits, a list of oft-changing relatively inexpensive wines, and a menu offering what Creegan describes as "upscale comfort food ---kind of like what you remember your grandmother making for dinner, but with a little twist."

Wide sliding windows are being installed near the main entrance on Harford Road. Upon entering, the bar will be to the left facing the north wall. Lining the wall to the right and facing several small tables will be curved wooden benches salvaged from Camden Station. Original wooden floors previously buried by six layers of tile and linoleum are in the midst of restoration. The walls will be plaster, the ceiling pressed tin. Beyond the bar and up a couple of steps will be a mezzanine dining area enclosed by railing.

The Creegans are also thinking about the possiblilty of occasionally offering acoustic folk music, blues, or jazz on slow nights. However, it will probably be another year before they seriously explore entertainment options pending renovations of a large room on the second floor into additional dining space.

During a period when the restaurant industry and a lot of trendy neighborhoods are feeling the pinch, the new Hamilton Tavern is well positioned along this rapidly emerging destination stretch of Harford Road. What's behind it all, I ask? "A lot of young people have moved to the area in the last five years, and there's all this energy and youth," Tom Creegan explains. "We all know each other and have talked for years about making this kind of thing happen rather than having to drive to Fells Point, Belvedere Square or Towson. It finally reached the point where everyone took the plunge."

Friday Dinner at Lithuanian Hall

2008-06-05T15:36:00.000-04:00

If you're interested in dining at a Lithuanian restaurant, there's only one place in Baltimore to have the experience. It's at Lithuanian Hall, 851-853 Hollins Street in West Baltimore on Fridays from 6 - 9. I first stumbled upon the space while attending a"Night of a Thousand Elvis's" event taking place on the floor above. The square bar, dining area and dance floor beyond it, with their lights and decorations define an unadulterated late 1950's environment.

Although, the official hours are 6 -9, most diners are gone by shortly after 8, which is when Mrs. Yi and I arrived. It's a good idea to call first (410-685-5787) to make certain dinner is being served. The web site notes "every Friday evening with few exceptions."

This isn't really a restaurant, but a private club whose members share Lithuanian bloodlines. By all appearances, volunteers from within the organization contribute to making these Friday night dinners possible. Despite a "members only" sign, anyone whose presence is perceived as non-threatening can count on being politely received. The food is the real deal. I began with a $2.00 bowl of the beetroot and cabbage soup (borsch) requesting light on the sour cream. It was most pleasing. Mrs. Yi and I also split a similarly priced appetizer "snack" of sausages, cheese and black bread, served cold. We would have refrained had we expected our main courses to be as generous as they were.

For an entree, I chose the baked carp with boiled potatoes and salad. The carp was pleasing enough, although I would have liked to know something of how it made its way from the water to my plate. While the boiled potatoes were unremarkable, I liked the basic salad of lettuce, tomato and green onion tossed and wilted in its creamy dressing as much as any tossed salad served me at a Baltimore restaurant since Marconi's closed.

The pork country style ribs that Mrs. Yi ordered would have suited me better. They were straight forward, delectable, and similarly accompanied with boiled potatoes and that wonderful salad. We washed everything down with cans of Utenos Lithuanian beer, which was light and refreshing. By the time a plate of Lithuanian pastry appeared for desert, we were much too full to partake.

Upon leaving, we were happy we'd chosen to dine here. Nothing else in Baltimore is quite like it.

Coming on Harford Road this Fall: The Parkside Fine Food & Spirits

2008-05-29T14:30:00.000-04:00

This is what 4709 Harford Road looks like right now, but not for long. By early fall, The Parkside Fine Foods & Spirits will fill the 5,000square foot space where in recent months Cameo Lounge evolved into a blight on a neighborhood deserving better: much better. The Parkside's concept encompasses a restaurant, a delicatessan, and a bakery, as well as a an upscale bar and cocktail lounge adjoined by a childrens' play area. Its partners are Chris Cashell, his wife Colleen Cashell, and Vickie Johnson, all who met and cut their teeth at the Brewers Art.

Chris was the Brewer's Art's brewer. He will be in charge of The Parkside's bar where frequent beer/wine tastings and pairings are anticipated. All the spirits will all be high end. Present thinking is one brand for each individual liquor. The gin will be Boodles.

Colleen's cooking and baking skills will extend from the main kitchen to full responsibility for The Parkside's on-premises bakery. Vickie will oversee a deli component that will roast and smoke its own meats.

"The green thing: reuse, recycle, and repurpose," are Vickie's words describing the theme." Decor and and color scheme will complement The Parkside's logo. Expect the menu to offer a bit of history and education in addition to offerings of Amercian and European fare plus a few international items Vickie says "aren't seen that much." A childrens' menu is also planned.

I asked Vicki, a resident of Medfield, why this location? "Hamilton's the next neighborhood to take off," she answered. "Chris and Colleen love living over there, and they want a neighborhood hangout." For sure The Parkside will be a very different kind of hangout from what was here less than two years earlier. In these tough times for the industry, increasing numbers of new and interesting restaurants are blossoming along Harford Road through Hamilton and Lauraville. By all accounts it's a welcome dynamic.

Bulgarian Fare in Carroll County

2008-05-23T09:23:00.000-04:00

My perception of the culinary scene in Carroll County, Maryland, hadn't envisioned the possiblity of encountering Bulgarian cuisine such as the kavarma that's pictured above. The restaurant was Amante Pizza and Pasta, at 21 Liberty Road near Sykesville.

This sole east coast franchisee of a Seattle chain includes a long dining room atop a well-appointed bar and lounge space with two television screens and welcoming vibes. Though this past Tuesday was a bit too wet and chilly for it, outdoor seating is also available. Amante's dinner menu consists of mostly mainstream Italian American selections with a few exceptions like nachos, chicken wings, and Greek salad, beneath which is listed the Bulgarian specialty shopska salad. Describing it as a "salad without lettuce," the menu lists the ingredients, most of which are also present in its Greek salad. No mention is made that shopska is the Bulgarian take on it.

Not on the menu, but featured on a chalkboard hanging in the dining room was the kavarma, a Bulgarian delight prepared singularly and specially for "Mediterranean Night," which at Amante is every Tuesday. The dishes of Bulgaria are pretty much a subset of Mediterranean cusine. Most Bulgarian dishes incorporate a composite of Slavic, Greek, and Turkish influences. Thus, the featured special could just as well have been moussaka, stuffed grape leaves, or any number of items. Kavarma, however, like shopska salad, is specifically associated with Bulgaria. Though often made with pork, chicken works just as well, as it did this past Tuesday.

Credit "Mediterranean Night" to Amante's extraordinarily industrious franchisee proprietors, Ivelin and Daniela Kostadinov. The couple emigrated from Bulgaria in 1993. Daniela also styles and cuts hair (Mrs. Yi's and mine included). Though Ivelin devotes the thrust of his energies to Amante, he also owns and is responsible for two other businesses. Ivelin and Daniella's smiling faces, their unbounding positive energy, and the ease with which they greet everyone has won them a lot of American friends.

As we enjoyed a Manhattan featuring Maker's Mark and a fuzzy pear, shopska salad arrived as our first course. Aside from bearing no lettuce, the presence of red peppers rather than pepperoncini was one item that differentiated it from a classic Greek salad. The homemade vinaigrette dressing, however, was the clincher. Mrs. Yi and I loved our shopska salad. The portion was large enough that the "half order" that the two of us split could handily have served as many as four people.

Next was a bowl of lentil soup, which is very popular in Bulgaria. In what could have been a spirit of Bulgarian/Chesapeake fusion, it came seasoned with Old Bay or a related seafood spice mix, which for me was more a distraction than enhancement to a preparation that otherwise would have been memorable.

The kavarma main course delivered no such distractions. It consisted of abundant tender chunks of tender and juicy chicken breast in a broth created with tomatoes, onions, red peppers, white wine, a bay leaf, and other minor seasonings. The broth was hearty, yet light enough that ultimately, I requested a spoon with which to savor every last bit. Think like what Grandma, regardless of nationality, used to make, only better. The wonderful smooth and neutral homemade quality was outstanding. For both my palate and spirit, this Bulgarian kavarma was the ultimate chicken stew.

Two Mojitos: Tangerine and Blood Orange

2008-05-16T14:24:00.000-04:00

As far as I'm concerned both of these mojitos are for the ages. At left is a tangerine mojito, at right a blood orange mojito. They were inspired by a basic tangerine mojito recipe that I copied from the Web a few months ago at an independent site that gave the credit to the Martha Stewart Living Magazine. More recent searches, however, which included the Diva's web sites, failed to locate it. What had most intrigued me was that unlike most mojitos, this was apparently one to be enjoyed straight up. In order for the tangerine mojito to be an original, I substituted a splash of Mrs. Yi's kumquat liqueur for the splash of "orange liqueur" the original recipe called for. Later, seeing that we were out of tangerines, I devised the blood orange mojito on my own. It proved to be stupendous. Here are the formulas for both:

TANGERINE MOJITO

1 tangerine, seeded and sliced
8 mint leaves, torn into pieces.
2 ounceds light rum
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
Splash of Mrs. Yi's kumquat liqueur (needless to say, Cointreaux, Grand Marnier, or curacao would work---I think next time, I might try applejack.
Ounce of soda water
Mint sprig for garnish

Muddle the tangerine with mint leaves in a cocktail shaker. Add rum, lime juice, sugar, and ice. Shake well. Strain into cocktail glass. Top with whatever you choose to splash over the top side of a spoon and then the club soda. Garnish with a mint sprig.

JAKE SLAGLE'S BLOOD ORANGE MOJITO

2 ounces fresh blood orange juice
8 mint leaves torn into pieces
2 ounces light rum
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
splash of 151 proof rum
1 ounce of soda water
mint sprig for garnish

Muddle the mint leaves, lime juice, and powdered sugar with a mortar and pestle. Add the rum and lime juice and muddle just a bit more. Pour into a cocktail shaker. Add crushed ice, shake, and strain into a cocktail glass. Over the backside of a spoon add a dash of 151 proof rum, then top with soda water and garnish with a mint sprig.

Rockfish and the Captain's Cookery

2008-05-10T16:44:00.000-04:00

I've motored back from New Orleans and Jazzfest with far too many pictures and potential topics to deal with when sticking to the framework and format of Unique Culinary Adventures. The May 3 post covers my drive south, and a podcast is now up on Itunes sharing what seemed to me to be as locally relevant as any of the numerous culinary tidbits gleaned from this trip.

Having devoted both a post and a podcast to these recent travels, the time has come to deliver at least some that was promised in our final podcast before leaving Baltimore. I'd just returned from a very successful expedition on a charter boat in the Chesapeake fishing for rockfish (striped bass to people from many locales). Some of my 34 inch trophy went for chowder and ceviche. The fried main course is pictured above next to a cover image of the cookbook from which the recipe was lifted. The Captain's Cookbook presents the most interesting and generally informative perspective regarding the preparation of saltwater seafood I've ever encountered.

Its author, Walter Kaprielian, in addition to being a charter boat captain and highly skilled home cook, was Chairman and Creative Director of Kaprielian O'Leary Advertising in Manhattan before retiring to Easthampton, Long Island. His role in the advertising business was rooted in graphic skills, which The Captain's Cookbook exemplifies magnificently. For instance, the numerous illustrations that accompany each recipe are Kaprielian's own pen and ink drawings, and every word of text is penned in his handwriting.

The Captain's Cookbook is as functional as it is artistic. Its illustrations cover all the steps beginning shortly after the main seafood ingredient leaves the water. They bring together images in a manner difficult to capture by camera of what's involved from start to finish. Included also are images of extraneous ingredients, even cooking utensils. To obtain his recipes, Kaprielian wrote to charter boat captains on each coast requesting their favorites.

The Captain's Cookbook was published in 1976. It has been out of print for a number of years, although a few copies are available on Amazon. Last October, I had the pleasure of fishing with Walter on his boat and later joining him and his wife Dinaz for dinner. Aware of my fascination with The Captain's Cookbook, he presented me a copy as a gift. Walter also gave me permission to publish a recipe from his book at Unique Culinary Adventures, albeit without the informative illustrations and magnificent penmanship.

He obtained the recipe being shared from Captain Steve Bales, described as "well known as a bass fishing skipper in the San Francisco area". Although entitled "Captain Steve's Special California Fish Fry," Kaprielian makes clear that it's perfect for rockfish. And so it was:

1. Fillet one rock cod or striped bass or any rock fish. Cut into serving sized pieces.
2. Beat two eggs and gradually add inough beer to cover the fillets.
3. Cover dish and refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours, the longer the better.
4. Remove fish, shake off excess moisture and roll (or shake in a bag) in flour,
meal, or crumbs into which salt, pepper, garlic powder, and dried parsley
have been added.
5. Deep fry in oil or Crisco until golden crusted brown.

"Fantastic" is the word Kaprielian uses to describe this dish, and I agree. The lime wedges and cup of hot sauce in the picture were included at my personal discretion.

South to Jazzfest

2008-05-03T11:37:00.001-04:00

There was no commitment to post from the road. In fact, one was already drafted to fill in this ten day period where being in front of a computer ranks low on the priority pile. Surely soon enough another opportunity will arise for that pre-prepared post---about ceviche in the U.S. during the late 60's---to come in handy.

But alas, the rain is pouring down this Saturday morning in New Orleans, and the gates for Jazzfest don't open for another hour. The rain was worse here last weekend for the first weekend of Jazzfest, and I feel fortunate for having picked the second. It's been great so far, just no time since arriving to sort out what to post, so this will be about the drive down.

First day covered the interstates through West Virginia and into Kentucky, ending up in Lexington. Travel such a route, and at every exit, the preponderance of fatty high cholesterol junk food relative to anything reasonable could be difficult to surpass anywhere on earth. I'm certain that interesting edibles lurked somewhere not to far from me, but for the earlier stages of this run, the salads offered by McDonald's and an occasional cheeseburger would have to suffice.

Farther along and well past that stretch on the Interstates, it was great to spot a boiled peanuts stand along Route 52 in the mountains of Northern Georgia, at least until determining it was dormant. Fortunately the goobers were boiling away at another pulloff just a few miles down the road. I love boiled peanuts and am unable to understand why their popularity hasn't spread beyond the South. Even more surprising is no boiled peanuts are amidst what to my palate is "the greatest fast food emporium in the United States" at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. So much food there, yet boiled peanuts are so popular just a little farther north in Louisiana. Boiled peanuts are healthy and good for you. They lend themselves to canning. If I were ever to return to the specialty food business, they might be my best shot for making money. It'd cost me less than 50 cents a can to have them packed. Properly packaged for selected markets, who's to say they wouldn't bring $3 a can on the shelves?

When pulling off for the night Birmingham, Alabama. I knew that the Highlands Bar and Grill was fancy and figured that adding a linen sport jacket to my clean T shirt and new jeans ensemble would be appropriate. Upon approaching, however, I thought better and returned across the street to my room in the Highlands Hotel to put on a shirt with a collar and trousers. The scene spelled high society as much as any restaurant where I'd be inclined to stop while passing hurriedly through the South. Tuesday night, the place was totally packed and buzzing. I gained admission through the bar and found a seat. Never was I in a town where a single hot spot had to be so obviously and totally dominant. In Baltimore, you'd never find a situation like this on Tuesday night. In my opinion, we're too big a city with too many choices. Follow my link to the Highlands website for further description.

It's time now to head on up to Jazzfest. The weather looks like it's about to clear---sooner than expected. Don't know when I'll next pull out the laptop. Lack of material wont be a problem.

Delicious Gudgeons from the Gunpowder River

2008-04-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

Each year, quite specifically when the dogwoods are in bloom, the gudgeons spawn. I know to find them in the Gunpowder River northwest of Pulaski Highway. Quite possibly they're in corresponding sections of the Little Gunpowder and Winters Run, though I haven't had time to check.

When caught using baby garden worms for bait and the tiniest hook possible---try to find a 16 hook---one could just as well be fishing for minnows, of which gudgeons are considered a species. They look much like smelt, but are even smaller: likewise when cooked once they've been scaled, beheaded and gutted. Eating gudgeons, however, is a different story because unlike smelt, these tiny gudgeons are likely to be judged as unbelievably delicious according to just about anyone's palate.

I dip my gudgeons in buttermilk and then into flour that's been seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little garlic salt. Then I fry them up at medium high heat in a mixture of butter and vegetable oil before briefly crisping them on paper towels. The only way to eat gudgeons is with your fingers, and it's important to remove their tiny backbones when doing so. I even cook the roe, saving it from from every gudgeon, washing each one, and then combining them all into a little ball which is observable in the center of the picture at right.

Dara Does it Again

2008-04-21T15:41:00.000-04:00

I refer to local food maven Dara Bunjon as "Dara Does It," which is actually the name of her business. Its role within the food industry includes consulting, food styling, public relations, writing, teaching, cooking, and prepping for shows. Part of the "Dara Does It" package is Dining Dish, the "Dara Does It" blog, which also mails out E-newsletters. Now there's more.

A couple weeks ago, Dara received an E-mail from the Denver headquarters of The Examiner asking her to blog for them, and she's subsequently taken on additional responsibilities as the Baltimore Dining Examiner. The relationship between Dining Dish and The Baltimore Dining Examiner in terms of content has yet to evolve. Both will run the gamut relating to food: restaurants, recipes, shows, food products, and people, much as "Dara Does It" covers so many bases within the food industry.

The fine quality of Dara's work speaks for itself at Dining Dish. At the Baltimore Dining Examiner, generating traffic becomes equally important as part of the equation. Dara's propensity for networking, both personally and on-line, promises to bid her well in this regard.

Dara was the first food blogger I met after starting Unique Culinary Adventures back in November, 2005. We had lunch at Martick's and have since seen each other at a lot of the same places. The most recent was Baltimore's Great Taste Extravaganza, for which Dara not only organized and emceed the panel of Baltimore bloggers, but supervised sourcing, styling and prep work for the participating celebrity chefs.

This afternoon, at my bidding, we met for lunch at Baltimore's Ze Mean Bean at 1737 Fleet Street in Fells Point. I arrived to find Dara openly snapping pictures with her camera, which suggested minimal concerns about her identity being "outed." We both loved Ze Mean Bean and our lunch. My crab cake over fresh asparagus was outstanding. Subtly seasoned and with plenty of lump, it tasted to me as if made using Atlantic crab meat at peak season in September. April is typically much too early for most of the Atlantic crab meat that finds its way here to be at its best. However, when I asked our nice waitress---who'd just returned to Baltimore after living in Paris---she informed that the crab meat was from Asia. I'd love to know Ze Mean Bean chef's secret for making it taste so Maryland.

Perhaps Dining Dish and/or the Baltimore Food Examiner will also be posting something nice about Ze Mean Bean. My many conversations with Dara and knowledge of her writing style lead me to believe she could prove receptive to picking up pointers from the http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/dining/reviews/blog/ blog of which she's a regular reader. Dara refers to its author, Baltimore Sun food critic Elizabeth Large, as "The Queen."

OK, my imagination runs all over the place, but of one difference in modus operandi between these two bloggers, I feel quite certain. Were Elizabeth Large to be my lunch partner at Ze Mean Bean or anywhere else in Baltimore, she wouldn't be running around with that camera and taking all those pictures.

Third Annual Baltimore Oyster Bash

2008-04-14T15:58:00.000-04:00

Pictured above are Tommy Chagouris of Nick's Inner Harbor Seafood at Baltimore's Cross Street Market and his wife Theresa. From the way they're smiling and the way they're dressed, if you know them, you can tell it's a special occasion, namely Baltimore's third Annual Oyster Bash. For this event, Tommy has restrained his nearly legendary workaholic tendencies enough to delegate many of the day's responsibilites to others from Baltimore's veritable "who's who" of oyster lore.

In the picture at left, the four oysters surrounding the top curve of the lemon are Quonset Points from Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. The two beneath the lemon are known as Whale Rocks, produced through aquaculture near Mystic Connecticut. Gaze down on the meat, and the two genre look pretty much alike. However, the exterior of the Whalerock shells are quite green, the Quonset Points a lot whiter. Both are clean, smooth, and saltier than the Chesapeake oysters and Louisiana oysters which Baltimoreans are more familiar. The latter were being shucked and consumed as well, along with some great barbecued oysters, wonderful small fried oysters, and oyster stew.

The crowd on hand had as much to do as the oysters themselves with making this event so special. Baltimore's Annual Oyster Bash is quite different from your typical oyster roast: smaller, more intimate, and without all the tables and chairs. At Nick's, space is limited to its several bars and the aisles between them. Despite an apparent sell-out and because of good planing, sufficient room remained for mingling.

Baltimore's most colorful oyster aficionados were everywhere. Among the more prominent were some local shuckers around whom almost a kind of cult following has developed in recent years. Such a shucker is Paul Bartlett, who's pictured at right. Formerly executive chef at Phillip's, Bartlett has assisted Morris Martick with Martick's as kind of as a lark for more than a decade and owns a culinary consulting business. He's best known, however, as one of Baltimore's great oyster shuckers.

Oyster shucking competition for speed as well a presentation reigns supreme in the identities of George Hastings(left) and Vernon Johnson (right) in the image at left. The two grew up near each other in Southwest Baltimore, both sons of shuckers. Every October they both compete in the United States National Oyster Shucking Contest here in Maryland at the St. Mary's County Fairgrounds. In 1999 and 2003 Hastings was the U.S. champion. Each victory earned him passage the following year to Galway, Ireland, for the International Oyster Shucking Contest. In 2000, Hastings distinguished himself as the number two shucker on the planet. Though Johnson never won a National Championship, he defeated Hastings ---and other contestants including Paul Bartlett---in the Rotary Club of Baltimore's Baltimore Oyster Shucking Contest, of which yours truly was---and continues to be---the emcee.

Another big player in the crowd from the local oyster scene was
Dale German, whose friendship with members of Baltimore's shucking fraternity led to the Wye Oak Commemorative Oyster Knife Project. These three "oyskateers" conceived, designed, crafted and marketed 1000 very special oyster knives made with wood salvaged from Maryland's felled Wye Oak. The knives sold for $200 each. As a user and maker of tools in the course of his furniture business, German took on the wooden handles. All the knives were sold. Proceeds went to oyster recovery and Chesapeake Bay restoration.

It's unlikely that Baltimore will have any further oyster events this significant for another five months or so. Where in the past, fresh oysters were only sold during months with the letter "r" in their names, the emergence of aquaculture and a propensity for shipping oysters in from afar has led to year round availability. They never taste anywhere near so good, though, as between September and April.

From Maxim's of Paris to Baltimore

2008-04-09T10:57:00.000-04:00

Chef Pierre V. Monet, who's enjoying retirement in Towson, began his career in the restaurant business as an apprentice at hotel DeFrance in the French Alps. While still in his teens, he moved to Paris and become Garde Manger and Chef de Partie at Maxim's of Paris. After just a few years there, Maxim's dispatched him to the United States to be involved in the opening of Maxim's of Paris in Chicago where he soon became Executive Chef. In those days, Maxim's of Paris in Chicago was pretty much a replica of the original Parisian Maxim's in both decor and cuisine, most of which was assembled with ingredients flown in daily from Paris. Few Chicagoans had much of a clue as to what was happening in what then was strictly a meat and potatoes town. Most who dined at Maxim's of Paris in Chicago were European.

Chef Pierre was one of nine Frenchmen from Maxim's to make the crossing. None spoke English. After a couple years, all of them but Pierre had returned to France. Eager to assimilate and assume a role in America's nascent culinary revolution, Chef Pierre moved on through a new sequence of high level responsibilities. They included being Executive Chef at Chicago's Racquet Club, Executive Chef at The Chicago Club, and Chef/Consultant for the opening of dining rooms seating more than 1,500 when Chicago's Ritz Carlton opened in 1975.

After Chicago, Chef Pierre's cirriculum vitae places him in various executive chef positions back and forth between the Four Seasons at Lake Ozark, Missouri and the Tidewater region of Virginia. By 1980, he'd settled down in the latter area to become Corporate Executive Chef for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a stint that lasted for 17 years. A highlight was being responsible in 1983 for feeding world leaders attending the international economic summit in Williamsburg hosted by President Reagan. The duties involved in putting this affair together ranged from consulting with Craig Claiborne to overseeing individual roles for many of America's greatest chefs. Among them were Wolfgang Puck and Paul Prudhomme, who remains a close friend.

Chef Pierre stayed in the Tidewater area until his retirement in 2005. At the bidding of his wife Cary and stepchildren here in Baltimore, the couple moved north and ended up in the Towson area. Rather than frequenting numerous local restaurants, they usually stay in and enjoy each others' cooking, which includes a lot of Italian specialties for which Cary has developed a special flare. Much of their food is from immaculate gardens behind the house where Chef Pierre is pictured in the top photo. More recently, Pierre has also taken to keeping bees. Should the right opportunity arise, he's also leaving his options open to consult within the local restaurant or banquet arena.

I asked Chef Pierre to compare Paris's culinary scene with New York's. "Much the same," he answered, adding that in his opinion London is now the world's culinary capital, especially with its diverse variety of ethnic restaurants. And what about here Baltimore? It didn't surprise me a bit when he named Chameleon as his favorite restaurant.

Hog Jowl Bacon

2008-04-02T15:27:00.000-04:00

Hog jowl bacon is a dish of the American South and very much a soul food kind of thing that I've not been able to find here in Baltimore. While perhaps we have butchers who could slice you up some hog jowl, it would have to be smoked for it to be bacon. Hog jowl bacon is interesting and, in my opinion,very much underappreciated.

The only commercial packager of hog jowl bacon that I'm aware of is the Cumberland Gap Provision Company, a processor of smoked pork products owned by Smithfield Foods. I called the company to find out if hog jowl bacon was distributed to the Baltimore area. A salesperson informed me that the only store nearby that could have it would be Food Lion. I checked at two of the handful of nearby stores, and didn't find any. My first encounter with hog jowl bacon was in Central Florida at a Publix west of New Smyrna Beach. Hog jowl was by far the least expensive bacon choice available.

On the other hand, if measured by the amount of meat rendered when cooked, it's possible that hog jowl bacon could have been the most expensive choice that Publix had available. Once the fat's been rendered, you end up with very little bacon, and it tends to fall apart into pieces, less so if you have a bacon press. Nuking hog jowl bacon has never worked for me nearly so well as for other kinds of bacon. Low moderate heat in a frying pan does a much better job. Properly cooked, the taste and flavor of hog jowl bacon are more pleasing to me than of any other kind of commercially packaged bacon I've ever tried.

An additional use for hog jowl bacon that you could be reading about here for the first time is to lard birds to keep them moist and flavorful through roasting. Last night I roasted another one of those "wild ducks" from the AA Supermarket for an uninterrupted 23 minutes at 500 F. Not only were the ducks cooked perfectly (better after one minute more than the 22 minutes originally recommended in that post), so were the little pieces of hog jowl bacon that I couldn't resist picking off of the duck and eating before even getting to the table.

Live Shrimp Updated and Close at Hand

2008-03-27T00:06:00.000-04:00

The proverbial "Acres of Diamonds" tale could be a metaphor for this post. All the while that I was running around to bait stores in eastern Florida or darting about San Francisco's Chinatown in search of the freshest shrimp on the market, namely shrimp that were still alive, a better story awaited me much closer to home in Hurlock, Maryland. Notwithstanding, I'll still take credit for any awareness that Unique Culinary Adventures raised regarding the delectability of shrimp thirty seconds after being tossed live into boiling water.

Although Marvesta Shrimp Farms has gleaned plenty of positive press, I first learned of the operation at Baltimore's trendy Woodberry Kitchen whose menu listed Shrimp & Spoonbread: Locally raised shrimp, herbed pan sauce as a $10 small plate. Woodberry Kitchen had run out the night Mrs. Yi and I dined there. That did not restrain me from asking our waiter: How fresh are these shrimp when they arrive? "Sometimes a few are still moving when they get here," the waiter replied. I determined to get to the source.

Scott Fritze, who owns Marvesta Shrimp Farms with partners, Guy Furman and Andy Hanzlik, returned my call. Though obviously partial to very fresh shrimp, Scott hadn't reached the point of throwing live ones on the fire. He implied, however, that my own enthusiasm for doing so could have merit. When shrimp die, he said, a kind of rigor mortis or stiffening happens that could be of culinary significance. I told him about my San Francisco experience and asked his opinion on whether the quality of shrimp netted live from the tank of a Chinatown fishmonger was likely compromised. If so, Scott suggested it could have something to do with the means by which they were transported there.

One thing seemed certain: No way those Chinatown shrimp could have been the product of as nearly organic or totally controlled and environmentally friendly a system as Marvesta has developed. All of Marvesta's shrimp are raised indoors while the vast majority of shrimp consumed in the United States arrive frozen from massive outdoor farms along the coastlines of numerous foreign countries that export them to us. Believe me, they don't taste anything like shrimp that are truly fresh.

When we buy shrimp labeled as fresh, who knows how long they've been dead? Most likely they were harvested by shrimpboats in American waters. In some cases, they could be the product of one of the few other shrimp farms in the U. S. , most or all of which are outdoor farms producing shrimp seasonally rather than year round. Typically, these shrimp are raised in ponds where antibiotics and other extraneous components are more likely an issue than at Marvesta's unique indoor facility. Marvesta has its own system and its own technology. Fritze concedes that indoor systems designed to produce similar results exist, but are all a bit different from one another. To his knowledge, Marvesta is the only indoor shrimp farm in the U.S. that's a going commercial concern. Reaching that point marked the fruition of a big challenge.

Now the big challenge is to deal with a level of demand that far surpasses the quantity Marvesta can produce. An expansion is underway that should increase production fivefold. Marvesta shrimp are harvested, immediately packed with fresh ice---never frozen---and enroute within a couple hours to a few select restaurants, most within a 150 mile radius. Consumers can order shrimp from Marvesta via the Internet. They will be shipped the same day provided the order is placed by 1 p.m. Lucky recipients just might find a few of them still kicking upon arrival.

Indian Food Bash in Northeast Baltimore

2008-03-19T12:54:00.000-04:00

That's Neesha Patel holding a tray of Tandori chicken legs in the kitchen at Brian's house across the street from Mrs. Yi's and my house in Mayfield. They were but one of many scrumptious Northern Indian delights served at his bash there this past Saturday. In fact, the scene suggested to me that an Indian restaurant closer to our diverse northeast Baltimore neighborhood would do well for all concerned. Neesha's combined finesse as a chef, kitchen organizer, server and deliverer of Northern Indian staples follow thirteen years assisting her now retired parents. Before retiring, they were responsible for Maharaja in Greenbelt.

Five months ago, Brian's last foodcentric party was largely word of mouth. Attendees were some family, old friends, new friends, even friends of friends. Amidst guests previously unacquainted, early perfunctory conversations evolved into shared raves as Brian's ribs, shrimp, brussel sprouts, and macaroni hit the dining room table. It was like that this past Saturday, albeit with a very special Indian flavour.

Kicking it off were sublime samosas accompanied by crisp papadums with dipping bowls of cilantro chutney and tamarind chutney. The flavors were all derived by mixing individual spices together with a special blend of garam masala. Any first visual impressions suggesting the buffet table at a stereotypical Indian restaurant vanished as guests absorbed the texture, consistency, taste, and flavor that defined it all. What did Neesha do that was different to make everything so wonderful, I asked? Her response:"A little less heat."

Following the samosas and papadum, the main spread arrived of curries, Tandori chicken, dal (beans), and pilau (rice). The tray at top left features paneer (cheese). Next to it is chole (chick peas). The bowl in front of the chole holds chicken tiki masala. In the orange bowl above it is lamb rogan josh. On the plate immediately to the right of the rogan josh are tandori chicken legs direct from Brian's outdoor grill. Left to right in the far right trays are dal (beans) and pilau (rice). Again every dish, however straightforward, was prepared with a flawlessness and complimented by ooh,s and ahh's until and after consumed by well-fed guests.

A diversity of wine and other beverages contributed by guests brought only added to the Brian's enormous selection. After contemplating a pitcher of lassi, Mrs. Yi and I opted to bring a Pimm's Cup concoction. We fudged the recipe instructions and rendered something original that we now believe was better than had we'd not erred. It proved popular enough to make the list for future posts at Unique Culinary Adventures. Stay tuned.

Fresh Crappies from Tommy's at Baltimore's Northeast Market

2008-03-13T23:32:00.000-04:00

The crappies on ice at Tommy's in Baltimore's Northeast Market were practically still breathing, and a lot bigger than any I've ever landed with rod and reel. A trip this time of year to Tommy's at Baltimore's Northeast Market has become for me a tradition that's held for at least a decade.

Pleasing as the fish themselves at Tommy's is the way they clean them for you. Purchased from elsewhere, unless fileted, I can almost count on having to complete a once-over effort at scaling and gutting upon arriving home . At Tommy's, I just say head off, scale them, remove the guts, save any roe sacks, and leave the fins and tail as they are---so I can enjoy them fried up crisp and crunchy. Then I run off to purchase and woof down a fried turkey wing with hot sauce a few isles back. Five minutes later, my crappies are ready. The one pictured above and another just as big set me back about a total of $5.00. When I get them home, it's clear that the folks at Tommy's did everything right. All the scales are off, and every quirky detail of my instructions was followed.

The original reason for this trip to Tommy's was to find yellow perch. When in season, which is usually about now, the only place I can count on for sure to have them is Tommy's. Not today it turned out. Later, I would learn that Maryland's DNR had prohibited both the harvest and sale of yellow perch this year between Feb. 1 and March 14. My consolation was an early season presence of crappies and bluegill. No one loves the sport of fishing for panfish more than I, or for that matter indulging in the end product. However, neither the fish nor my luck as a fisherman has been running too well lately. Last week, my son and I spent a day fishing for yellow perch below the dam at Wye Mills and returned to Baltimore with a single crappie less than half the size of the one in the top picture.

My preparation techniques haven't changed much since two years ago when Unique Culinary Adventures posted about the panfish at Tommy's: Assuming they're properly scaled and gutted, rinse the fish and any roe sacks and then dry with paper towels. Next dredge in a mixture of half flour and half cornmeal seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little paprika. Heat up equal parts of vegetable oil and butter over medium high heat and when hot enough for them to sizzle, fry up the fish, turning once, til golden brown.

On rare occasions over the years, I've observed panfish at other fish stalls around town, but never as consistently as at Tommy's. The best part is how fresh they are if you get there at the right time.

Wild Duck at a Baltimore Supermarket

2008-03-07T16:52:00.000-05:00

Wild duck cooked bloody rare is my favorite food in the world.* Was finding a couple of frozen ones at the AA International Market on Security Boulevard too good to be true? Maybe, maybe not. Though hardly comparable to an Eastern Shore canvasback, when roasted for 22 minutes at 500 degrees, no question lingered but that this was, indeed, a wild duck. My understanding was that commerce in wild ducks was illegal. I'm also ignorant as to how America's Asian markets do their sourcing and have yet to surpass the language barrier enough to find someone who could inform me. But I've been combing over the freezers, stalls, tables, and shelves of Baltimore's Asian markets for many years, and this was a first.

Perhaps these "wild ducks" were actually raised on farms, maybe in China. Or they could have been bagged by a hunter God knows where. I doubt the latter, as the skin bore no evidence of piercing by buckshot. After finding wild duck at an Asian market where plenty of items were past the sell date and much that was frozen was poorly packaged, you'd think I'd heed the "safe handling instructions" on the cellophane wrap. Being as it were, my craving for rare wild duck transcended any such precaution. You might even say that those 22 minutes in the oven I claimed were something of a fib. At least a couple of them were spent pulling my duck in and out of the oven for basting. I'd dotted it with butter. A little bacon might have worked better, but we were out of it. You don't really need to baste a wild duck with anything to keep it moist when cooking it this rare, even though wild duck is a whole lot leaner than the various kinds of duck served in restaurants or that you find in other stores.

I proclaim this my find of the year.

With some hindsight, I believe that 22 minutes at 500 F would prove a bit too rare for most readers and suggest that 23 uninterrupted minutes at 500F is the perfect length of time for cooking this kind of duck, all of which are pretty much the same size. To avoid having to interrupt the process for basting, I recommend laying several strips of bacon over the bird before roasting.

Lima Bean Casserole

2008-03-02T12:39:00.002-05:00

Here's another bigtime personal favorite that originated here in Baltimore. It's a routine contribution from our kitchen to pot-lucks, and once again relates to my local culinary "roots." As with the previous Unique Culinary Adventures Baked Cucumbers post, it's a wonderful vegetable dish offered up in the spirit of a season where great fresh vegetable options hereabouts are in short---and/or expensive--- supply. This time the decades old local cookbook from which I adapted the recipe actually exists and is in my possession. It's a 1973 project of the Women's Committee of Baltimore's Walters Art Gallery entitled Private Collections: A Culinary Treasure.

Note that I say "adapted" and not "copied." That's about measurement. The original recipe calls for "1 package frozen lima beans," and gives no size or weight. Through the years I always had great success using flat boxes weighing 10---or was it 12? ounces. That's how lima beans were typically packaged in those days. Whatever their weight, they weighed distinctively less than the 16 ounce plastic bags that are more prevalent today. So adjustments were made.

LIMA BEAN CASSEROLE

1 16 ounce package frozen lima beans

3/8 pound sliced fresh mushrooms

6 tablespoons butter

3/8 cup chopped onions

1 1/2 cup shredded cabbage

1 1/2 teaspoon salt and some pepper

1 1/2 teaspoons soy sauce

3 tablespoons shredded parmesan/romano cheese (original recipe says grated parmesan)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Cook beans according to package directions. Drain and turn into a shallow casserole. Cook sliced mushrooms, onions, and cabbage in butter until soft. Add to the beans along with salt, pepper, and soy sauce. Sprinkle cheese over the top and bake 15 to 20 minutes. Serves 4

Baked Cucumbers: A true all time favorite

2008-02-25T16:33:00.000-05:00

These baked cucumbers are a masterpiece as I see it, which return me to my Green Spring Valley roots. The recipe reached me thirty five years ago on what may once have been an old church cookbook page that had landed amidst a sheath of yellowed and frayed papers from an obscure drawer in my mother's pantry. Mrs. Svend Peuleche was credited as the contributor to whatever was the publication. Thank you, Mrs. Peuleche.

These baked cucumbers are a way to enjoy a cooked fresh vegetable that twelve months a year will taste taste every bit as fresh as if straight from your garden. They're easy to make and just about impossible to screw up.

BAKED CUCUMBERS

Cucumbers: Figure one per serving

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Lemon juice

White wine

Paprika

Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter a casserole and layer the bottom with cucumbers. Dot the cucumbers generously with butter, sprinkle with salt and fresh ground pepper. Continue with this routine until the casserole is filled with as much as is needed. Pour lemon juice over---to the tune of about half a small lemon's worth per cucumber, and some white wine, about a tablespoon's worth per cucumber. Then dot the top layer with butter and sprinkle not only with salt and pepper, but also some paprika. Cover the casserole tightly and bake for 1 hour.

Vello's Pickled Pinfish

2008-02-19T11:10:00.001-05:00

Up until a few years ago, I knew pinfish only as a bait variety occasionally pitched on handmade signs along roads near Florida backwaters. Little did I realize that these pinfish were the same thing as the little "sailors choice" fish that Vello Tou and I would pull in on tiny hooks from the Intercoastal waters east of Oak Hill, Florida. Fresh from the hook, we'd often slice off little filets for bait. Most, however, we kept to bring home along with with plenty of similarly minuscle grunts, mangrove snapper, and spot. Upon returning to his house in Oak Hill, Vello would set up a little table in the back yard and clean any larger fish we were fortunate enough to have caught. Then he'd go to work on all those tiny ones, each of which rendered two less than bit-size skinless filets, one from each side. When done, he'd insert these tiny filets into zip-lock bags, add water until the bags were full, and place them in the freezer to be available for pickling at a later time. A native of Estonia, Vello, who's 94 now , grew up in a culture where pickled fish were a staple.

Once pickled, the different species are almost indistinguishable from one another in both appearance and taste. If taking on a project like this here in the Mid-Atlantic, I'd attempt to source some very small Norfolk spot as fresh from the water as possible and certainly well before their arrival at the bait store.

Vello pickles his fish in wine that he makes himself---from grapes, elderberries, cactus, even tangerines---whatever kind of homemade wine he goes with isn't a big deal to him, though to use vinegar is out of the question. My advice would be to choose any wine that's white and reasonably dry. Here's how Vello does it:

PICKLED PINFISH

Fileting tiny fish like this---skin off---can be tedious. Needless to say, you need a sharp knife and a lot patience that should ultimately prove to be well rewarded. You also need plenty of filets, a couple dozen at the barest minimum assuming a small container. Glass, plastic, even tupperware is fine, as long as it has a tight fitting lid. The other ingredients needed are as follows:

Kosher salt

Dry white wine

McCormick pickling spice ground into a very coarse powder

Onion slices.

Sprinkle some kosher salt on the bottom of your container. Add a layer of filets, and sprinkle a bit more salt, some pickling spice, and a few reasonably thin onion slices atop. Next add a second layer of filets and top them similarly. Continue this process until the container is no more than 3/4 full in order to allow space should the absorption of wine cause the fish to expand. Add wine to barely cover. Then cover the container and refrigerate for at least a week, checking occasionally to determine whether more wine should be added to assure the filets remain moist.

Fresh Bay Leaf Cocktail

2008-02-12T22:55:00.000-05:00

Once again, I've got a new favorite cocktail. In the Jan. 27 Jake's Unique Culinary Adventure's podcast, we promised a post on the nightcap at WD-50 on Clinton Street that concluded the recent Manhattan experience that has dominated this site for the past three weeks.

WD-50 was the subject of our May 23, 2006 post. Therein, we raved about enjoying both drinks and dinner at a small table in the bar section and later being escorted by bartender Toma Palomino to the kichen to meet WD-50's world acclaimed owner/chef Wylie Dufresne.

On this return visit, we had the good fortune to monopolize Toma's extraordinary knowledge, skills, and service for approximately 30 minutes. In my estimation, Toma pushes the spirits envelope in much the way that Wylie Dufresne approaches WD-50's cuisine.

Because a bay tree grows directly outside our kitchen door, I was particularly intrigued with a cocktail on the menu that derived its principal flavor from bay leaves. Watching carefully as Toma mixed it, I asked a lot of questions, scribbled a lot of notes, and later came up with a version that tasted exactly the same and was every bit as pleasing. Here goes:

BAY LEAF COCKTAIL

1 large or 2 small fresh bay leaves---don't even think of using dried ones

1 heaping teaspoon natural sugar or "sugar in the raw"

2 ounces vodka

1 ounce fresh lime juice

1 egg white, beaten

1 ounce sugar water.

With a mortar and pestle grind the bay leaf with the sugar until the bay leaf is almost powdered. Place in a cocktail shaker with the vodka, lime juice, egg white, and sugar water. Shake with ice cubes and strain into an ice filled highball glass.

Soto

2008-02-07T16:31:00.000-05:00

The "shiro ebi tar tare" (white toyama sweet shrimp with yuzu, shaved cured mullet roe, caviar, served in shitake ginger broth) at left goes for $18 at Soto, 357 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan's West Village. With that said, I can only wonder what the selections are like uptown at Masa, where without sake, tax, or tip, the tab is said to regularly exceed $400 a person. Let the picture suffice for further words except to point out that the two orange slabs atop the caviar are shaved cured mullet roe, a treat entirely new to Mrs. Yi and me, despite our close ties to a region of the US where mullet is almost a staple. I quite dislike mullet, but this cured roe was heavenly.

The main reason we picked Soto for my birthday is partially represented in the image at right "uni ika sugomori zukuri,"(fresh west coast sea urchin wrapped in thinly sliced squid and shiso, served with quail egg and tosa soy reduction). Sea urchin is known to be a passion of owner/chef Soto Kosugi, and this is is one of several preparations typically available. In the picture, you can see just a bit of light orangish uni poking out to the right of the quail egg yolk. Soto obtains uni that is sweet, mild, fresh, and far removed from that "icky" stuff in wood boxes at more typical American sushi bars. Our biggest and only complaint was that Soto ran out of fresh sea urchin before we could try any of its other uni specialties.

So we went for "tuna tar tare" (chopped big eye tuna with pine nuts, asian pear, cucumber, scallion, sesame seed in spicy sesame sauce) as seen at left, one of two tuna choices from Soto's "sushi" menu. The other tuna selection on the sushi menu was "chyu toro tar tare" (chopped blue fin fatty tuna with avocado coulis, garnished with caviar, chive, served in sesame ponzu sauce). In retrospect, I wish we'd tried that one as well. A less complex "sushi nigiri" menu offered five different cuts of tuna, which quite interestingly were from Turkey and in Ecuador. It was from this menu that I ordered the blackfish(tautog) of our previous post.

At this friendly spot where sushi fanatics take pleasure in sharing insights, word from the table adjoining us came that we really should try the "ika truffle "(thinly sliced japanese squid mixed with puree of black with black winter truffle from provence, France, and tamari soy reduction, old madera, shiso, wasabi tobiko.) On further reflection, the idea of combining raw squid with French truffle became indeed too much to resist. It tasted much as I would have expected and was delightful.

Cock's Combs at Casa Mono

2008-02-02T01:20:00.000-05:00

I don't recall whether I simply read it somewhere or heard it from Andrew Zimmern on the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods Show, but my expectations were that cock's combs would prove to be something like chicken feet without the mess and ugliness of spitting out a lot of bones.

Perhaps, but the cock's combs pictured above, which Mrs. Yi and I enjoyed for lunch recently in Manhattan at Casa Mono, 52 Irving Place, had absorbed enough salinity and flavor from the cepes (similar to porcini) mushroom broth in which they'd been slowly braised, as to dominate. Regardless, simply to know that Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich were responsible was enough to convince me that I was not likely to find better
prepared cock's combs anywhere. Don't hold me as to the garnish, but I suspect that Italian parsley and the minced carrots are what you see.

Casa Mono's stupendous Razor Clams a la Plancha was featured in the most recent Unique Culinary Adventures post. Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to photograph Mrs. Yi's Duck Egg with Mojama, the latter item a prized genre of Spanish salt cured tuna. I had better luck getting a shot of the Piquillo Peppers with Oxtails, as pictured at right. Beneath the piquillo peppers is oxtail meat severed from the bone and chopped after braising.

Razor Clams and Tautog: Evolution from Earlier Posts

2008-01-27T13:07:00.000-05:00

Razor clams were the topic for our post of Dec. 14, 2006. Almost a year before then, on Jan. 29, 2006, a post regarding tautog (also known as blackfish) appeared on this site. Where those two posts were for introduction purposes, I never doubted that in future travels, the opportunity would arise to present both items at a new level. That opportunity came last weekend during a trip to Manhattan where Mrs. Yi's and my palates were bedazzled.

The razor clams were one of more than several small plate dishes comprising our Saturday afternoon lunch at Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich's Casa Mono, 52 Irving Place. The clams were prepared "a la plancha," which means grilled on a small plate. Any butter was eschewed in favor of olive oil and garlic. I'm almost certain the chopped green herb is Italian parsley. I consider Casa Mono's rendition of razor clams far superior to the preparation shared on this site in 2006. It should prove easy to duplicate if and when fresh razor clams can again be locally sourced. The next post of Unique Culinary Adventures will feature the cock's combs that Mrs. Yi and I enjoyed at Casa Mono.

Finding tautog nigiri and on a sushi menu proved for me to be the fulfilment of a long-entertained vision. It happened at owner/chef Soto Kosugi's Soto, 357 Sixth Avenue in the West Village. While puzzled that the flesh color was yellow- brown rather than white as I'd always found it to be in the past, I had no question regarding authenticity or freshness.

Soto's sushi/nigiri menu seemed but an afterthought when compared to the far more complex offerings on its "From sushi bar" and "From kitchen" menus. They included several tantalizing preparations featuring sea urchin, which is one of Chef Kosugi's specialties. In several weeks, Unique culinary Adventures will be posting more about Soto with images and descriptions relating to at least several its owner's sublime creations.

Grilled Skate at Le Bernardin

2008-01-22T03:05:00.000-05:00

OK, this is a "Baltimore" site, but part of the spin has always been to showcase what Baltimore is without, an example of which is pictured above. Baltimore doesn't have Le Bernardin, and perhaps that's a good thing at a time when the economy is forcing so many to hold back. Such restraint could have had something to do with Mrs. Yi's and my good fortune in managing to snag luncheon reservations this past Friday after calling but a week ahead. Who's to say that Le Bernardin isn't the greatest seafood restaurant on earth, while in the most recent Unique Culinary Adventures podcast, I surmise that it's $64 prix fixe lunch just might be the best deal in Manhattan?

The photograph portrays my entree of "Grilled Skate; Mango-Jalapeno Salad; Bourbon, Lime and Guajillo Pepper Broth" entree, which wins my nomination for the best skate preparation on the planet. Preceding it was a choice of appetizers. I had "Hamachi Marinated Vietnamese Style with Muoc Nam Vinaigrette" while Mrs. Yi started off with "Kampachi Tartare Topped with Wasabi Tobiko, Ginger-Coriander Emulsion." For an entree, she went with "Masala Spiced Crispy Black Bass; Peking Duck-Green Papaya Salad in a Rich Ginger-Cardamom Broth." I didn't write down the specifics regarding the deserts that Mrs. Yi and I enjoyed, nor was that information available on Le Bernardin's website. Here's the link to an image of my desert.

Mrs. Yi's Kumquat Liqueur

2008-01-16T15:43:00.000-05:00

Never mind the Bullitt Bourbon bottle. Mrs. Yi and I have access through a source in Florida to all the free kumquats we could ever want. Over the past several years, Mrs. Yi has been using them to make this glorious kumquat liqueur. It's a wonderful libation in its own right and is also an apt substitute for Grand Marnier, Cointreaux, Curacao, and and spirits of similar persuasion. All Mrs. Yi needs are a wide-mouthed two quart container, enough kumquats to fill it, two cups of powdered sugar, and a quart of vodka.

She begins by washing the kumquats, getting rid of any that are not completely fresh, then removing any bits of stem. Next she cuts each kumquat in half, lengthwise or crosswise, it doesn't matter, and places them in the container, layering the kumquat halves alternately with powdered sugar until the container is full. After filling the container with vodka, Mrs. Yi then covers it tightly and shakes it vigorously until the sugar---most of it at least---is dissolved. After that, the container remains on a shelf for the next two months. She remembers to flip it nearly every day so that one day the container is right side up, the next day upside down, and so forth. When the two months have passed, she scoops out all the solids, namely the halved kumquats. Thereafter, the container and the liqueur within stays on a shelf for another two months, allowing the sediment time to settle on the bottom. When the liqueur is clear, it can be slowly funnelled off into bottles through cheesecloth or a tea strainer.

More often than not, kumquat liqueur will serve the purpose of almost any citrus based spirit. The Calvados kumquat sour to be shared here is our own invention.

CALVADOS KUMQUAT SOUR

3 ounces Calvados

1 ounce kumquat liqueur

4 teaspoons lemon juice

Shake with cracked ice in a cocktail shaker and strain into a martini glass

Bygone Culinary Route 301

2008-01-12T14:46:00.001-05:00

This isn't really about the food. It relates to images of disappearing culinary options along what was once the main route south to Florida.

Over two round trips, one in January, 2007, and another just this past week, I like to think I've covered it all, at least from Richmond to Ocala. That amounts to twice down and twice back, or four journeys. Each journey covered a different leg or quarter of the old 301 route.

Route 301 passes the vicinity of Jarratt, Virginia just a few miles north of the North Carolina line. Although I never had a meal at the Jarratt, it's presence is my only remaining memory from a youthful jaunt in the days before I-95. Most likely, the rest of that trip happened at night. Just a little farther south and still in Virginia, I passed Goofus's Quick Mart with breakfast and lunch specials as well as fresh bait being pitched on the blackboard outside. Goofus's may not have been there way back when, but then as now, quite a number of the establishments along Route 301 boasted similarly intriguing names. A few miles further south in North Carolina, I drove by a store called BooBoo's.

Continuing on into North Carolina, I passed a food store where posted on the window were handwritten signs for catfish, fresh greens, "slab whities," and "wintertrout." I'd have stopped in to see what the latter two were about, but they were closed on Sundays. Further south on a leg that I drove last year was a Maryland Fried Chicken place. Part of a Florida based chain that to the best of my knowledge has no Maryland presence, I sampled its version of our fried chicken a number of years ago and found it a bit too greasy for my liking. Heading on, it occurred to me that "Bill's BBQ Ribs," pictured at right could be ready for a new sign. Given another chance to do so, I'd stop in to give their ribs a try.

South Carolina and Georgia probably had the greatest number of establishments whose appearance and signage evoked that funky sense of being lost in time. The pink place with its sign damaged beyond recognition had obviously been history for quite awhile even when I passed
by a year ago. The Mexican restaurant at right had also obviously closed, but retained its paint job. Fanciest of all the South Carolina eateries (or was this one in Georgia?) that I passed, also last year, was the Lobster House pictured below at left. When I drove by, it was closed. At the Paradise Restaurant, definitely in Georgia and shown at lower right, the only sign of life was the truck parked outside. The cable spool next to the sign was a mystery to me. The nearby Paradise Motel, however, was open at the time and by all appearances was even funkier than the restaurant. You can see an image of the motel on my Flickr site .

And that takes us to Florida. Here the number of produce stands open in January increases dramatically, and signage heralding whatever they're selling such as pictured below at left, is common. Most of the places feature boiled peanuts, a personal favorite destined to one day be the subject of a post here at Unique Culinary Adventures. I'm never able to resist purchasing a bag and thereafter rarely able to resist trying to open first the bag and then the boiled peanuts to be eaten while driving. This practice can be particularly messy because boiled peanuts are full of dirty hot water. Once I tried it when Mrs. Yi was along, and she threw a fit. As for the satsuma, it's actually a kind of mandarin orange also known as "mikan." Finally, upon passing the Orange Shop, just a bit north of Ocala, you know you're just about to the end of the line.

Conch Promises

2008-01-05T12:01:00.000-05:00

You're looking at cracked conch. The image is a kept promise from the Unique Culinary Adventures podcast regarding our preparation of conch recently purchased from the Asian supermarket in the shopping center at the southwest corner of Route 40 and Rolling Road. As noted in the podcast, this was the first fresh queen or Caribbean conch (as opposed to whelk labeled as conch) that I'd encountered at retail in the Baltimore area for quite a while.

After trimming away the "foot," we pounded the remaining white meat with a mallet until tenderized and somewhat flattened. We then marinated it for two hours in lemon juice seasoned with salt and pepper. To assure crispness and a breaded coating that would ultimately stick, we prepared a batter using a tablespoon of baking powder to a cup of flour, adding enough beer---about a half cup--- to moisten. We dipped the conch into the batter and removed it. Although relatively little of the batter actually coated the cold conch, that which did expanded enough to cover it and turn golden brown after three minutes of deep-frying in a basket at 350 F. We then drained briefly on paper towels before serving with lemon wedges and hot sauce.

Conch salad, is really nothing more than a synonym for conch ceviche and is easy to prepare. Once again, remove the "foot" and pound the white meat. When tender, cut into a half-inch dice and marinate for a couple hours in a third of a cup of fresh lime juice and two teaspoons of salt for each pound of conch. Without draining, add fresh vegetables---tomatoes, bell peppers, celery, onion as desired--- along with some cilantro. Serve after seasoning to taste with salt and hot sauce.

PIckled Rainbow Trout

2007-12-31T12:06:00.000-05:00

Here's that pickled trout as promised in the most recent Unique Culinary Adventures post. It's our take on the pickled herring New Year's tradition. Pickling can make trout and herring seem more similar to one another than you'd think. This preparation, which was adapted from a recipe in the vintage cookbook Classic Cold Cusine by Karen Green, is simple and quick. Once together, Ms. Green's recipe says to "cover and refrigerate 12 -24 hours." We tried it at 12 hours, again at 24, most recently at 48, and it just got better and better. Here's the recipe as prepared and pictured above. .

PICKLED TROUT

2 pounds fresh rainbow or other fresh water trout

PICKLING LIQUID

3 cups water
1 cup cider vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 lemon, thinly sliced
1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 bay leaves
6 peppercorns---we used pink peppercorns and they worked fine
4 whole cloves
4 whole allspice
2 whole garlic cloves
* lemons wedges for garnish

Slice the bodies of ecah trout into three to five pieces. In a medium size pot or large saucepan, combine the pickling ingredients. Bring to a boil, cover to leave a slight opening, and reduce to a rapid simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Increase heat to a boil again and add the trout. Poach trout in the pickling liquid for 3 to 6 minutes, or until barely tender. Remove pot from heat and allow to rest for a few minutes. Carefully remove trout from pot and place in an attractive refrigerator-to-the-table bowl or dish with a lip. Pour pickling liquid over top. Cover and refrigerate for at least 12 hours. At serving time, you may find that the pickling liquid has jelled. This is due to whatever natural gelatin was in the fish bones. Fifteen seconds in the microwave got rid of it for us. Serve as you wish by placing the dish with a spoon on the dinner table, or perhaps draining and placing individual pieces on small lettuce-lined salad plates.

*Ms. Green's recipe says to garnish with lemon wedges. We didn't. The lemon you see in the picture was part of the marinade.
Adapted from Classic Cold Cusine, by Karen Green, copyright 1984 by Karen Green

Goose Gumbo and Seasonal Ramblings

2007-12-28T08:32:00.000-05:00

On several fronts,things get pretty wild around the Unique Culinary homestead come the Holidays. With family converging from afar, the activities begin with arrangements to have interesting food and drink around the house, to compiling and preparing a Christmas dinner menu, and ultimately to coming up with something appropriate for ringing in the New Year.

This Christmas it all began with 100 Olde Salt oysters ordered from Rappahannock River Oysters in Virginia. You can hear all about this ultra-high salinity take on those wonderful Chincoteague oysters of yesteryear by downloading our December 26 Unique Culinary Adventures podcast.

Next ordered were the breasts and legs of two geese from Schlitz Goose Farms in Sisseton, South Dakota. The result is pictured above. Known as "goose gumbo" around our house, it's really the buckshot gumbo for which a recipe appears in the November, 2006, issue of Food & Wine Magazine.

The great culinary surprise of the season was the impulse purchase that accompanied the goose parts order from South Dakota, namely a couple of individual smoked goose breasts. Ranging in size from 1/2 pound to 1 1/2 pounds and in cost from $5.50 to $11.75, they provided the most delectable smoked meat experience of my lifetime. The slices pictured at left were all that remained of the second breast by the time it occurred to me to shoot a picture.

The Christmas dinner menu was as follows:

Mrs. Yi's Caviar Pie as featured on this site Nov. 30, 2006.
Shrimp Ceviche from my sister-in-law Carmen.
Sweet Corn and Chile Soup according to a recipe provided in 1992 from the Yellow Brick Bank Restaurant in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Luscious Turkey Breast as featured on this site Nov. 26, 2006.
Baby Peas with Mustard Horseradish Butter from the April, 2007 Gourmet Magazine.
Wild Rice and gravy.
A salad that Mrs. Yi made up as she went along of red leaf lettuce, arugula, pomegranate seeds, chopped apples and chopped pears tossed in lime juice, chopped red onion, and crumbled bleu cheese tossed in olive oil, Champagne vinegar, lime juice, salt,and pepper.

After all that, no one had room for desert, which would have consisted of ice cream and and whatever sweets had found their way into the house in the days leading up to Christmas.

Now it's time to be thinking about New Years. At the moment, pickled rainbow trout is the only item all but certain to figure in. If that happens, you'll be able to see a picture and read the recipe here. Happy New Year if we don't get to you before then.

Christmas Roast Partridge

2007-12-21T20:20:00.000-05:00

This straight-forward approach to partridge is less about Christmas and pear trees than auspicious coincidence. A post on partridge was promised in the Unique Culinary Adventures podcast of December 5 regarding the fate of the two frozen ones recently purchased for $6.25 a piece at the AA international supermarket on Security Boulevard.

The options available for preparing partridge are endless. Upon typing "partridge recipe" into a web search, the first site to come up offered 39 different ones, most of them pretty fancy. The last time I prepared partridge was 25 years ago from a very fancy a recipe out of The Four Seasons Cookbook. The result succeeded despite at least one shortcut.

We know this because the Four Seasons cookbook noted that "to make really good eating, a partridge must be hung by the neck for several days." Unlike the game farm partridges used then as now, such hanging takes place prior to plucking and refers to partridges shot in the wild. Its purpose is to enhance a desired gamey taste and tenderize the meat.

Missing a beat perhaps, I'd be curious as to how such a gamey taste would relate to the taste of so white-fleshed a bird. A bit of tenderizing, however, is definitely in order, at least so long as achieved through cooking technique. Here's what the late James Beard had to say in his 1972 edition of James Beard's American Cookery: "Roast partridge, it seems, has a habit of being tough and resisitant to the knife and needs very careful cooking." We followed his lead in this regard, and even though the legs and wings were a bit tough, they were more to my liking than had they been less so. The breast proved moist and tender. The smaller the bird, the more tender it's likely to be.

As previously noted, with so many recipes around, we'll refrain from adding another and keep with the basics. Following them not only should enhance any more elaborate preparation, but prove sufficient to render exceptionally pleasing results.

BASIC ROAST PARTRIDGE

1 or more partridges
5 slices of bacon for each partridge
salt and pepper to taste

Line 5 slices of bacon crosswise across the breast of each bird, hopefully so as to cover it entirely and secure each slice with toothpicks at the back. Preheat oven to 450. When oven is preheated, place each bird on it's side on a rack in a shallow roasting pan. Roast for 5 minutes, then turn to the other side and roast for 5 minutes longer. Repeat the process so that each side has received two five minute sessions for a total of 20 minutes. Next reduce the oven temperature to 375F. Remove birds and pan from oven to place birds on their backs so that the breast side is up. Return to the oven and roast at 375 for another 20 minutes (for a smaller bird) 25 minutes for a larger bird. Remove and season with salt and pepper. Serve while still wrapped in the bacon.

Mangosteens and Mangosteen Martinis

2007-12-15T15:13:00.000-05:00

Unaware of ancient news that mangosteen martinis were "taking the New York club and restaurant scene by storm," I deluded they were my invention. Then I searched the web with "mangosteen martini" only to be dazzled by dozens of sophisticated and elaborate ways to fix them. Mangosteens were mentioned in the Unique Culinary Adventures podcast of November 12. We later shared our recipe for mangosteen martinis in a November 25 podcast. By reading on, you'll find it once again here.

First a quick primer: Fresh mangosteens were illegal in the United States until the second half of this year over concerns regarding the Asian fruit fly. By early September, a few fresh mangosteens were showing up at expensive greengrocers in Manhattan. Prices were said to be astronomical, according to an NPR Podcast. A web search reveals sites where mangosteens are frequently described as "the most delicious of all tropical fruits," and "queen of fruits." I agree.

In early September at Whole Foods Market in Mount Washington,
amazement over the price factor prompted me to whip out a less than trusty 3.2 megapixel cell phone and shoot the picture at right. Something seemed wrong. Going back quite a numer of years, even around Baltimore, and specifically at Big Boy across from the Lexington Market on Paca Street, I'd observed canned mangosteens. I recalled they were inexpensive and was right.

That became evident at Han Au Reun as noted in our Nov. 12 podcast. The two cans pictured below cost me $1.99 and $2.99 respectively. More good news is that poured through a strainer, each can yields more than a cup of mangosteen syrup, enough for quite a few martinis. So I simply strained, and funneled the syrup from one can into a tall and thin bottle to wait in the refrigerator for whenever mangosteen martinis are called for. I then consumed on the spot the canned mangosteens with my fingers in a state of umami rapture. Mangosteens have anti-oxident properties and other health benefits that are considered beneficial to the point that their extract is available in capsules on the Internet and in some health food stores.

Now it's time to keep that promise regarding our simple way to make great mangosteen martinis: The recipes everywhere on the web call for expensive and hard to find mangosteen juice products, never that wonderful syrup that's in every can. Shake up up two ounces of that syrup and three ounces of vodka in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice and strain into a martini glass. The result was such that I felt no need to splurge on one of those overpriced juices. Nor would I seek to thwart this straight-forward formula with extraneous ingredients. A little "clove" of canned mangosteen dropped into the glass was it.

Silkies or Black-skinned Chicken

2007-12-10T16:07:00.000-05:00

We got it wrong on a recent podcast. Having observed black-skinned chicken frozen in Asian markets, consumed it at the Maryland Club, then researched it on the web, I'm now befuddled, even embarrassed regarding those words "as white as chicken breast meat gets." A more accurate assessement would have described the meat to be "not as black as the skin." I make this correction after cooking a silkie, as the Asians call them, last night using a New York Times recipe. The result presented an interesting photo op and something novel for Mrs. Yi's and my dinner. I do suspect, however, that Mrs. Yi might have passed had she observed a bit of the visual yuk in the kitchen from start to finish.

Though Unique Culinary Adventures craves the unusual and offbeat, we'll pass on the gross. No image, therefore, is shown of the thawed black-headed, black-footed raw bird that came home with me on Friday from Han A Reun. It remained almost as ugly after the head and feet were removed and the carcass quartered. The instructions in the Times were straight-forward and easy to follow. A photograph that relates to this recipe as prepared at Manhattan's Chow Bar appears in the associated Times article. Interestingly, this image lacks any clear visual evidence of the definitive coconut curry component.

Stewed to falling from the bones, the meat was tender, and similar in flavor and taste to the kind of chicken we're used to. My big complaint was it was not finding it distinctive enough. Everything about that definitive coconut-curry component, however, was sublime.

Meanwhile, a couple of Cornish game hens await our attention in the freezer, and I wonder how they might work with this recipe as a silkie substitute. Perhaps sometime in the next month, such could be their fate. Or maybe instead we'll use those partidges from the AA Interational Supermarket that I referred to in another recent podcast. Stay tuned.

Return to Martick's

2007-12-04T14:11:00.000-05:00

Happily, the story on Martick's hasn't changed much from since our March 24, 2006 post. Morris Martick will be 85 next month. As of Thursday night last week, all was pretty much the same except that building's exterior has continued to picturesquely deteriorate, and instead of ringing a bell outside to gain admittance, a sign now requests that one "knock hard."

The main thing is that his food is every bit as delicious if not better than ever. Pictured at right is my rack of lamb. Just as good was my companion's bouillabaise. No less an attraction, however, was to revel in the atmosphere. Things only got better when Morris came downstairs from where he both cooks and lives to reminisce about old times and update their threads to the present.

When he says he'd like to sell the place and move on, you know it's not going to happen. Yet, who knows for how much longer Baltimore is going to have this treasure? While it deserves to be packed every night, that's no more likely than it would be for Morris to relinquish his duties as chief cook and bottle washer. For this reason, reservations are highly recommended, best at least a day in advance. To make them, call 410-752-5155.

The Savory Soups of Eula's Cuisine

2007-11-30T17:25:00.000-05:00

As a former soup entrepreneur, I couldn't help but notice the table at Baltimore's downtown Sunday morning farmers market from which Eula McDowell was selling various kinds of bean soup in jars. My original interest was about the prospect of doing a post for Unique Culinary Adventures relating to a kind of business where I'd actually had some personal experience. A couple weeks later, Eula and I met to talk about it all at the Woodlawn home she shares with her husband Marvin and their two young sons. When we finished, she gave me a still hot 32 ounce jar of her "Black-Eyed Peas w/Smoked Turkey" soup to try when I got home. Within a half hour, I'd scooped some into a bowl with a large spoon, and the taste took over.

With a flavor profile to die for, I found that black eyed pea with smoked turkey soup to be delicious beyond comprehension, completely superior to any other black-eyed peas based delight I'd ever tasted. It was just one from a line of numerous bean themed soups that Eula sells at the farmers market. They include navy bean with smoked turkey, black bean with shrimp, navy bean with vegetables, split peas with turkey ham, and lentil with onions. Soon, the business of "Savory Soups from Eula's Cuisine" will be reaching a new level.

At present, Eula is in the final stages of arranging to have a black-eyed peas with vegetables soup and a navy bean with vegetables soup commercially produced at the Mama Vida's facility in Randallstown. From there, she'll begin making the rounds to stores like Eddie's and Graul's, various cafes, and wherever else high-end gourmet products can be brought in free from the obstacle courses posed upon small producers by the big chains and their distributors. By bringing her soups to market in jars rather than frozen or in cans, Eula will be something of a pioneer. The idea, she explains, is to showcase them in a way where customers will be able to first perceive visually what they'll be serving and enjoying. Assuming everything goes according to schedule, the first run will happen just as the farmers market closes down for 2007 in late December. That leaves four opportunities remaining for anyone to taste these soups and purchase them as prepared by Eula herself in a commercial kitchen not far from her home.

As Eula tells it, the commercial production of these two soups is little more than a beginning. Many dozens of soups, spreads, salads, and pastes are already on the drawing board, and Eula has already trademarked a name for the bean themed shop/bistros she envisions. As we speak, I find myself constantly interrupting to bring her back to the present. And with each interruption, it occurs to me how much greater the commercial success of my own past line of soups might have been if launched from a table for the crowd at the farmers market rather than for the masses at a cannery.

Cream of Kohlrabi Soup

2007-11-25T16:59:00.000-05:00

Interestingly it was as a guest at Baltimore's Maryland Club that I first encountered cream of kohlrabi soup and loved it. Although basic instincts suggested that the Maryland Club recipe, however delicious, was quite simple, I decided first to check out a few cookbooks for some ideas, if not a recipe promising to be similar. They included Joy of Cooking, James Peterson's Vegetables, Annie Somerville's Fields of Greens, Bernard Clayton Jr.'s The Complete Book of Soups and Stews, and a host of others. Cream of kohlrabi soup was not in any of them.

Nor did much turn up on the Web. The best I could do was "Kohlrabi Thick Soup" from a translated Russian site called "Million Menu." The list of ingredients and extremely brief instructions did convince me, however, that with a bit of tweaking and adaptation, something close to the Maryland Club version was possible.

Kohlrabi, which is particularly popular in Hungary, Germany, Russia, Israel, and China, is very inexpensive and available from time to time in Baltimore, particularly in the fall. I was able to purchase three large heads----easily enough to make soup for sixteen---for just a dollar at the Sunday downtown Baltimore farmers market. To me Kohlrabi tastes like a cross between cabbage and turnip. In Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables: A Common Sense Guide, Elizabeth Schneider, after noting that kohlrabi was "not one of James Beard's favorites," describes it as tasting "like broccoli stems with a hint of radish and turnip---certainly worth a try or two." Interestingly, she includes a recipe for "Hungarian kohlrabi soup," crediting Bert Green's Greene's Green on Green cookbook. It reads like a winner though no dairy products, much less cream, figure into it.

Inspired by the the Maryland Club version and influenced by the instructions given on the Russian site, I took to the kitchen and produced wonderful results.

CREAM OF KOHLRABI SOUP

1 "head" of kohlrabi, including leaves

4 cups canned chicken broth

3 medium to large potatoes

4 tablespoons chopped spring onion

5 tablespoons white wine

1 cup heavy cream

salt and pepper

Chop the leaves after stripping away and discarding the stem part. Peel the kohlrabi "head" and the potatoes with a potato peeler before hand chopping them. Heat the butter in a Dutch oven, add all the vegetables and fry until they begin to soften, but not ready to begin turning brown. Add the chicken broth, cover and cook at a low boil for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add wine. In batches, blend all to a puree in a food processor or blender. Add cream, reheat, and serve.

Serves 6

Super Moist Quail for Thanksgiving

2007-11-20T10:25:00.000-05:00

While usually turkey, whatever the bird most Americans consume on Thanksgiving, its breast meat is likely to be white. When preparing such birds, my biggest concern is always about keeping that white meat moist without undercooking. Last year, Unique Culinary Adventures shared a turkey breast recipe where a thick coat of seasoned mayonnaise maintained the moistness. Next year, maybe, we'll find a way to render pheasant sufficiently moist. For this year we tackled quail. The result, following scores of failed attempts over many years, is on the mark, almost amazingly so.

Actually, a recipe bearing the secret had been right in front of us all along. The primary deterrent was a stubborn conviction that undercooking provided better assurance of moist meat. Other times, we'd cook the quail sufficiently, but eschew the recipe's instructions to lay bacon slices atop the inside of the split open bird after placing it breast side down in the pan. Breast side up with the bacon covering it seemed like so much better an idea. We were wrong, the recipe was right, and therein lay the secret.

SUPER MOIST QUAIL

6 quail, plucked, cleaned, and split with scissors

2 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp. canola oil

1/2 cup sherry

1/2 teaspoon rosemary

3 slices thick bacon

flour for dredging

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400. Pat quail dry with absorbent paper. Dredge lightly in seasoned flour. Melt butter with oil and try out the bacon until fatty part is translucent but nowhere near cooked. Remove bacon and place aside. Brown quail in the butter, oil, bacon fat mixture over high heat to brown quickly and remove, placing breast side down in a shallow baking dish. Pour in enough sherry to cover the bottom of the dish. Sprinkle quail with rosemary. Cut each bacon slice in half crosswise and place a half slice over exposed underside of each quail. Pour pan juices over all. Bake for exactly 15 minutes.

Hake Whiting Lake Trout Oyster Trout and Ling

2007-11-15T01:01:00.000-05:00

Whiting? Lake Trout? Oyster Trout? Ling? Forget it! The two species pictured above, which were photographed at Faidley's in the Lex, are none of these. The "whiting---lake trout" are actually silver hake. The "oyster trout---ling" are another kind of hake. How did it get to be like this?

First of all, it's a Baltimore thing. "Lake trout" is sold either in markets as shown at top left or deep fried between two slices of white bread with hot sauce at soul food carry-outs all over town. Takers generally assume they're getting freshwater trout. Question any fishmonger, however, and he'll quickly"confide" "lake trout" is actually a saltwater species. However, when he goes on to say it's "whiting," he's off the mark.

When the "lake trout" carry-outs run out of "lake trout" or "whiting," very likely they'll substitute "oyster trout" or "ling" to sell as "lake trout." Once again they're serving up hake, albeit a different species. In Philadelphia, this "oyster trout---ling" variety of hake is often sold as "mountain trout."

Both kinds of hake are members of the cod family and are harvested in New England ocean waters. Whatever you call them, when breaded and fried up, no one disputes how good they are.
I'm not aware of much that's been published on this subject. The most extensive, detailed and documented coverage I've been able to find was in a blog entitled Mutts ,by John Woestendiek, a Pulitzer Prize winning feature writer for the Baltimore Sun. Thanks, John.

Review of Rocket to Venus

2007-11-11T01:26:00.000-05:00

A lot of what I’d read and heard about Rocket to Venus at 3360 Chestnut Avenue in Hampden suggested that by Baltimore standards it was a first class hipster spot. Although a bit vague about exactly what a hipster is, I inferred that most hipsters were half my age or less. And perhaps for me to have showed up at Rocket to Venus to drink alone at the bar could have seemed a bit conspicuous.

On the Tuesday night that Mrs. Yi and I had dinner there at about 9, the Rocket was just about filled. The crowd was punctuated by a signifcant presence of nice looking women on either side of thirty.

Whatever the crowd, you should count on dinner at Rocket to Venus being a pleasant and satisfying experience. Think good food in an attractive setting that is at once dimly lit, welcoming, and arty. The fashionable waitress who served us was perfect at her job, not to mention warm and engaging.

Rocket to Venus has a good website with links to its menu where at $17, duck confit over greens in a charred tomato vinaigrette is the most expensive entre. Most items go for less than $10, some for less than $5.00. Three buttermilk batter fried pickle spears with chipotle ranch sauce can be had for $3.00. Five pierogies or dumplings stuffed with pumpkin, caramelized onions, asiago, and green onions are $5.00. I ordered an $8.00 plate of Cornmeal fried oysters with a smoked paprika buerre blanc. The four oysters, while small, which is how I prefer them, were definitely among the better fried oysters I’ve enjoyed in Baltimore. In addition, I enjoyed a $4. plate of wilted greens that included spinach, dandelion greens, and watercress with golden raisins and garlic.

No way that Mrs. Yi and I are too old to be comfortable here. We'd recommend it to anyone. Keep an eye peeled for us. We'll be returning again and again

Unique Culinary Adventures Podcast is Back

2007-11-05T22:38:00.000-05:00

After a ten month hiatus, the Unique Culinary Adventures Podcast is back. It's entitled Jake Slagle's Unique Culinary Adventures. To download or subscribe, click the appropriate 'pod" icon at top right. Or you can go into iTunes---store---Power Search---then write in "Jake Slagle" under "Artist," and click "Search." To download or subscribe, click on the image of chicken feet stew.

Listen to our thoughts on Baltimore's downtown Sunday morning farmers market in the current post. Earlier, Unique Culinary Adventures podcasts tended to parrot what was happening here on the site. Now our podcasts will be more diverse, covering additional culinary topics with a sensibility favoring the offbeat. Look forward to savoring oral bits and pieces from the notable food-related experiences that pop up between posts.

Two Millionaires: Here's How

2007-10-31T17:20:00.001-04:00

Millionaire Cocktail and Millionaire Punch

From the images, one might conclude these two concoctions are the same thing served in different fashion. The truth is that the Millionaire Cocktail combines Jamaican rum, apricot brandy, and sloe gin for its spirits, while the Millionaire punch relies strictly upon bourbon. Except for a dash of grenadine and some lime juice, the two drinks have nothing in common---at least in terms of mixology.

These aren't the only drinks bearing the name "Millionaire," or even necessarily the best known. Two other "millionaire" drinks feature gin as the principal spirit. All four have become retro, the two we're soon to share even more so.

While all the innovative envelope pushing that defines the modern cocktail age certainly makes for wonderful imbibing, a lot of great and distinctive drinks from yesteryear have become all but forgotten, at least on the cocktail menus of modern restaurants. Evolving later than the two about to be covered were the gin based "millionaire" cocktails in John J. Poister's 1989 New American Cocktail Guide, both which can also be tracked down on the web. Another "millionaire cocktail" quite similar to our own millionaire cocktail (above at left), though without the grenadine, is also currently on the web. It's a bit too tart for our palate.

The inspiration for the recipes we're sharing is a long out-of-print (1941) mixed drink book with a 1/4 inch thick oak cover entitled Here's How, compiled and edited by W. C. Whitfield. It was salvaged from beneath the liquor cabinet in the home of my late Uncle Fred, a man who truly appreciated a good drink. Much that related to how many of the drinks in this book should be blended and served was left to common sense and a bit of imagination, therefore to us. That's why we refer to Here's How as "inspiration" rather than "source."

These two drinks are easily made and should appeal to nearly all who crave mixed drinks that are distinctive without being weird. "Here's How!"

MILLIONAIRE COCKTAIL

1 1/2 ounces Jamaican rum

1 1/2 ounces apricot brandy

1 1/2 ounces sloe gin

Juice of one lime

Dash of grenadine

The book doesn't say what you do next and states "one part" each rather that 1 1/2 ounces for the rum, brandy, and sloe gin. We shook all the ingredients with crushed ice and strained into a cocktail glass. It proved to be smooth and exceptionally pleasing for a drink of this type.

MILLIONAIRE PUNCH

1 lemon

Dash of lime juice

1 teaspoon sugar

1 jigger (1 1/2 ounce shot) bourbon

2 dashes grenadine

Dash of Creme de Menthe

Fruit to garnish

The book instructs to shake the lemon juice, lime juice, sugar, bourbon, and grenadine with cracked ice, strain into a goblet, and garnish with fruit. What type of goblet, we wondered would suffice for a drink so small, so we doubled the ingredients and then strained into a wine goblet into which a number of ice cubes had been dropped. After all, who ever heard of a "punch" that didn't have any ice. Then we added our 2 dashes of Creme de Menthe and garnished with the fruit. The result reminded me just a little bit of an old time whiskey sour elevated to a new and wondrous dimension.

28th Annual National Oyster Cook-off

2007-10-25T11:39:00.000-04:00

Pictured is this year's Grand Prize winner, "Oysters Saltimbocca with Lemon Butter and Sage Sauce," submitted and prepared by Lisa Grant of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. It is a preparation of freshly shucked oysters on the half-shell placed in a baking dish on a bed of rock salt and then topped with a mixture of crisped prosciutto, garlic, sage, cracker crumbs, wine, lemon juice, lemon zest, and cheese. After seven minutes of baking at 450 F, they're served with a sauce of melted butter, lemon juice, sage, hot sauce, and pepper. Having tasted all nine dishes that made it to the finals, my personal opinion is that this one was worthy of the honors it received.

Every year since 1979, this cook-off and the National Oyster Shucking Contest, have been major attractions at the St. Mary's County Oyster Festival, for which the Rotary Club of Lexington Park, Maryland, is responsible with backing from numerous sponsors. Entrants from throughout the US submit well over 100 recipes annually to the St. Mary's County Department of Economic and Community Development. Three finalists and at least a half dozen honorable mentions are then chosen for each of three categories, which are Hors d'oeuvres, Soups and Stews, and Main Dishes. Anyone, including professional chefs, can enter. Interestingly, relatively few entrants have ties to the restaurant business. The grand prize winner receives a $1,000 cash prize. Lesser cash prizes are awarded to first, second, and third place winners in each category.

Here are this year's winners. You can see what all of them look like by going here:

Hors d'oeuvres:
First Place and Grand Prize Winner: Oysters Saltimbocca with Lemon Butter and Sage Sauce by Lisa Grant of Cherry Hill, NJ, as pictured and described above.
Second Place: Shogun Oysters: Mary Edwards, Long Beach, CA.
Third Place: Oven Fried Oyster Chimichangas: Frances Benthin, Scio, OR.

Soups and Stews:
First Place: Ale House Oyster Stew with Onion, Cheese and Bacon Croutons: Nacy Dentler, Greensboro, NC.
Second Place: New England Style Oyster Pot Pies: Veronica Callaghan, Glastonbury, CT.
Third Place: Maryland "Golden" Oyster Chowder: Ellynne Brice Davis, Leonardtown, MD.

Main Dishes:
First Place: Crispy Chipotle Oysters with Roasted Red Pepper and Corn Pudding: Michaela Rosenthal, Woodland Hills, CA.
Second place: Maryland Oysters Tagine with Apricots: Jack Campbell, Clackamas, OR.
Third Place: Oysters and Mushroom Crepes with Creamy Seafood Sauce: Ronna Farley, Rockville, MD.

The National Oyster Cook-off Committee holds the rights to these recipes. However, each year a cookbook is printed that includes not only that year's finalists, but numerous other interesting recipes never published before either in a past year's Festival cookbook or any other previously published cookbook or magazine. You can purchase this year's cookbook by sending a check for $6.00 to The National Oyster Cook-Off Contest, C/O St. Mary's County DECD, Cookbook, P.O. Box 653, Leonardtown, MD 20650

Oysters Denzer

2007-10-18T14:40:00.000-04:00

This weekend , just as last year, we're off to the 28th annual St. Mary's County Oyster Festival, which hosts both the U.S. National Oyster Cook-off as well as the U.S. National Oyster Shucking Contest. We submitted our Oysters Denzer recipe as pictured above to the National Cook-off, expecting it would be picked as a finalist, which didn't happen.

Anyhow, we'll be there to hang out, shoot pictures of the dishes that did make it to the finals, and later take in the oyster shucking competition. If all goes as planned, you should be reading here about it next week.

In the oyster cookbooks that have been published every year since the early 80's in conjunction with the National Cook-off are hundreds of recipes. They don't include the myriad more that have appeared over the last century in cookbooks and magazines. One wonders just how many additional ways could be dreamed up for preparing oysters. We thought our "Oysters Denzer" was one for sure. The name is borrowed from the former line of wonderful and exotic soups that appeared on this site Sept. 25, 2005.

We suspect perhaps that on first glance someone deemed Oysters Denzer as just another take on oysters (or clams for that matter) casino. Our recommendation is that you prepare it for yourself, enjoy, and arrive at your own conclusion.

OYSTERS DENZER

1 dozen oysters
1/8 pound pancetta, cut in thin slices and then minced
2 tablespoons green bell pepper, finely chopped
2 tablespoons green onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons cilantro, finely chopped
3 tablespoons pimentos, chopped
1 ½ teaspoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons parmesan reggiano cheese, grated

Thoroughly combine the pancetta, green pepper, onion, cilantro, pimientos, and lemon juice. Heat at least ½ inch of rock salt in a foil lined pan under a pre-heated broiler for 15 minutes. While rock salt is heating up, open the oysters and top with equal portions of the vegetable mixture. Apply the grated cheese evenly as a final topping. Remove line pan with heated rock salt from the broiler and rest oysters in the rock salt. Broil until cheese has melted and is rapidly browning---typically 3 to 4 minutes. Remove pan from broiler, and with tongs or a large spoon, remove the oysters to a plate immediately to prevent overcooking.

New Recipe for Green Tomato Season

2007-10-14T10:14:00.000-04:00

Read on for Jake Slagle's Green Tomatoes Recipe

Green tomatoes: They're in season, typically served up hereabouts breaded and fried. In my youth, pickled green tomatoes were in some of the Jewish delis, though other green tomato preparations didn't reach my radar screen , locally at least, until about 25 years ago. I guess Baltimore just wasn't far enough south.

Rather than a Southern recipe, it was one from an early California style cookbook that first got me started. Unique Culinary Adventures did a related post sharing the recipe last October. I've since prepared it again, and shot a more pleasing photograph than the original, which has been replaced with the image at left. The following week last year, we posted a green tomato soup recipe adapted from The Joy of Cooking for which the accompanying image remains.

It reached the point where I'd cooked green tomatoes enough times in enough ways to try creating a recipe of my own. What resulted entailed a little bit of frying with a run under the broiler. It turned out to be extremely easy to make and is pictured at the at the top of this post.

Jake Slagle's Green Tomatoes

3 medium green tomatoes, sliced

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup butter

brown sugar

salt

pepper

Mix flour with salt and pepper to taste, dip tomato slices in it on both sides, then fry tomatoes in two thirds of the butter until one side is brown. Place tomatoes, browned side down in a buttered baking dish. Brush the tops of the tomatoes with butter. Apply a small amount of brown sugar and paprika, then broil until the tops of the tomatoes are brown.

California's Pride of Baltimore Crabcakes

2007-10-06T16:29:00.000-04:00

Though Baltimore through and through, Unique Culinary Adventures often gravitates toward perspectives from elsewhere. When one of them reflects our own Baltimore perspective, we love it. Take for instance in Los Angeles, where Hungry Cat, a hip Hollywood hotspot at 1535 North Vine (I understand that now there's also one in Santa Barbara), occasionally goes to great length in showcasing the decidedly more laid back crab-eating culture for which our hometown is famous.

When the mood strikes, celebrity owner and chef, David Lentz (who grew up in Baltimore eating crab cakes) arranges for shipment of Maryland crabs to his establishment and has been known to serve up true Maryland style crab feasts right on down to the Natty Bo. Although one of the reviews I read suggested that after the journey, Hungry Cat's steamed crabs seemed a bit mushy, I've heard nothing but raves over the crab soup---and particularly the crab cakes.

I can personally vouch for the latter, at least as prepared according to Chef Lentz's recipe for Pride of Baltimore Crab Cakes from the January, 2006 Food & Wine Magazine in an article about---of all things--- bar food. That category surely has something to do with the fact that in addition to National Bohemian Beer, Hungry Cat's cocktail menu offers some of the most cutting edge cocktails anywhere.

Interestingly, the Hungry Cat crab cake recipe bears a bit of resemblance to the one we adapted for Dungeness crab meat in our Best Crabcakes Ever post. For that, we had turned to Chesapeake Bay Cooking with John Shields for the (secret?) recipe from Faidley's at the Lexington Market. The main difference between the two recipes is the addition of olive oil , grapeseed oil, and lemon juice to the mayonnaise mixture that holds the crab cakes together. Thereafter, half the mayonnaise mixture is placed aside to await the addition of garlic for an aioli accompaniment. The result is a true Maryland crab cake where the binding has a subtly enhanced flavor. Garlic aioli substitutes for tartar sauce.

Assuming this is truly what's served up at Hungry Cat, it passes my "Maryland Test" better than any crab cakes I've ever enjoyed when out of state.

Shrimp Boiled Live Yes

2007-10-02T11:31:00.000-04:00

The experience verified my long ago memory from Guaymas, Mexico. "Sweet" is the distinction between shrimp that have been boiled alive beyond those passing as "extremely fresh." The latter is a matter of freezing just-caught shrimp inside a block of ice.

Elusive for so many years, my source of live shrimp (for human consumption rather than bait), was Liang's Food on San Francisco's Stockton Street between Jackson and Pacific. When ordered, they're scooped from a clear lobster tank to a plastic bag and were being sold at $12.99 a pound. Despite a language barrier, the fishmonger effectively communicated that shrimp so packed without a source of air might not make it alive through my 30 minute bus trip back to Cow Hollow. To avoid such a problem, I went to a nearby Chinese housewares shop and purchased a cheap plastic pitcher with a top through which air could enter.

Awaiting my return to Cow Hollow, Angela already had a pot of hot water close to boiling. We added salt and then the shrimp, after straining away the water in the pitcher. After about a minute, we removed and once again strained the now-cooked shrimp. Another couple minutes to cool before pinching off the heads, separating from the shells, and YES!!!

Perhaps others are doing this here in San Francisco or wherever else, and it's been written about. If not, please credit Unique Culinary Adventures with breaking an exciting story .

To Boil Live Shrimp

2007-09-25T21:48:00.000-04:00

The image records my first encounter with live shrimp for human consumption anywhere in the United States. I shot it on a recent trip to San Francisco in a fish market along the frenzied strip of Stockton Street between Pacific and Jackson. To purchase, boil, and eat some of these shrimp is definitely on the itinerary of a return visit to San Francisco in just a couple of days.

I enjoyed shrimp cooked alive once before in the mid-1960's near Guaymas, Mexico. A lone entrepreneur was netting them from a canal along the road. He would scoop them briefly into a large pot of water boiling over an open fire and then into brown paper bags that went for a peso or two a piece. The delight of tearing in and chowing down became a cherished memory. Quite simply, they were the best shrimp I ever tasted.

For a couple of days last week, during a surf fishing trip to Florida, I figured that the opportunity to boil up live shrimp might arrive even before San Francisco. A number of bait shops were selling live shrimp out of tanks of circulating seawater. At Anchor Hardware in Oak Hill, Florida, an accommodating and clearly knowledgeable manager named Nadine informed me: "You don't want to eat those shrimp. You see how filthy that water is? It's full of ammonia and everything else the shrimp excrete and then (consume) before they eat each other. The shrimp that go to restaurants are frozen."

A better option, she said, would be to visit a shrimp house
when the live shrimp are brought in at night in boats. They're kept alive in compartments within the boats where fresh seawater circulates in and out. Once off the boat, circulating tanks take over, including one that's built into the bed of a special "shrimp" truck for delivery to the bait store. By then, unlucky fish are the best they're good for. Hopefully, on my next Florida fishing trip, I'll be able to properly time a nocturnal shrimp house visit and score.

Meanwhile, the water in that Chinatown tank is clearly a lot cleaner, and the shrimp are a lot bigger. If restaurants exist that have similar tanks from which shrimp can be scooped like lobsters, I'm not aware of them. The immediate game plan is to arrive in San Francisco's Chinatown with a minnow bucket full of seawater and hope to find live shrimp where they were before. Stay tuned.

Okra with Potential to be a Classic

2007-09-19T15:33:00.000-04:00

The recipe should be a classic. As an okra lover, I'm always looking for something new, but never came up with preparations that tantalized more than the Oven-Roasted Okra we featured on March 9, 2006, or this one

Okra is in high season now. The smaller pods that measure less than 2 1/2 inches are best, and they're easy to find. Bearing the humble title "Baked Okra," the above pictured recipe appeared in the New York Times sometime before the 1978 publication of Raymond A. Sokolov's Great Recipes from the New York Times. Although a staple at our house, I've never encountered it anywhere else. Lost in time, perhaps, and if so, worthy of return.

BAKED OKRA

1 tablespoon bacon drippings

1 pound fresh okra, washed and sliced---go for very fresh small pods

1 large onion chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

salt

pepper

4 strips bacon, cut in half

Cook the bacon in a skillet until it has rendered a tablespoon of drippings. Remove bacon and cook the okra, onion, and green pepper in the bacon fat over moderate to high heat, stirring constantly for 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper and turn into a 9 inch pie plate or small casserole. Bake 15 minutes. Arrange the bacon slices like the spokes of a wheel on top of the okra mixture and bake 15 minutes longer or until okra is tender and bacon crisp.

Ethiopian Cafe in Pigtown

2007-09-12T21:04:00.000-04:00

I wasn't aware of Baltimore's new Harar Ethiopian Cafe at 821 Washington Boulevard until just before leaving the Pigtown Festival last Saturday. After enjoying a meal there four days later, there's nothing about Pigtown that intrigues me more . The food is for real and healthy to boot. Everything on the menu goes for less than $9.00

With three tables for two and a fourth table where four might squeeze in, this could be the tiniest cafe in Baltimore. The menu says they're open every day from 10 to 6, although I was welcomed with open arms as a walk-in at 7:15. Five Ethiopian breakfast selections are offered, along with seven Ethiopian lunch choices and limited non-alcoholic beverages.

Observing breakfast options on the menu of an Ethiopian restaurant was a first for me. One was an Ethiopian omelet featuring egg, tomato, jalapeno, onion , and Ethiopian seasoning. The breakfast that most grabbed my interest was Chechebsa (Kita Fir Fir), or thin bread (kita) pieces served with butter and Berbere. Although Berbere seasoning is definitive as a key ingredient to both Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine, relatively few of Washington D.C.'s myriad Ethiopian restaurants so much as mention it on their menus. Seeing Berbere noted with regards to a breakfast item at this little spot in Pigtown grabbed my attention in a big way.

My $8.99 dinner of Kitfo is pictured above and couldn't have been better. Kitfo is "beef tartar seasoned with herbed butter sauce and Mitmita." As at all Ethiopian restaurants, it was served atop injera, the moist and spongy bread accompaniment as well as single utensil for enjoying all Ethiopian meat and vegetable dishes. Included with the kitfo were side orders of chopped collards, a genuinely good chopped lettuce and tomato salad, and an Ethiopian cottage cheese preparation known as lab. Mitmita is another Ethiopian seasoning that's more tart than Berbere. It came in a plastic cup. While kifto is typically served completely raw, here the beef appeared to have been thrown on the grill for perhaps just a second. The results pleased.

Beverages listed on the menu are coffee, tea, juice, bottled water, and a choice of two smoothies. My strawberry smoothie would have been perfect if just a bit colder. Espresso is available, though not on the menu. Nor were sambusas, described on a sign as "spring rolls," either beef or veggie, for $1.25. Though too full by the end of my meal to try one I look forward to stopping by for a sambusa next time I'm in the area at lunch time.

Pawpaw Punch at the Downtown Farmers Market

2007-09-06T18:08:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday Sept. 1, there were pawpaws at Baltimore's downtown farmers market. They weren't for sale, but just a few small ones were displayed at the Helium Brothers falafel stand. The idea was to create awareness regarding America's largest native fruit and to sell punch refreshments featuring pawpaw pulp blended with fresh blackberries, water, and cane sugar. This punch was by far the best beverage I've ever tasted at the farmers market. Only with luck is it likely to be served up again, at least this year.

All the pawpaws were from a lone tree in the yard of a Middletown, Maryland home next door to where self-employed stone mason Adam Fisher had been working. Baltimore is home to Adam, however. On Sundays he teams up with his Hamilton neighbor, Adam Kandel, friend Whitney Frazier, and whomever else they recruit to work the farmers market. Adam had long been conscious of and curious about pawpaws, but never knew where to find them. After spotting the tree in Middletown, he contacted its owner who was kind enought to say "pick all you want." I recently met up with Adam in Frederick to chat about pawpaws. He doesn't have much free time to go looking for them, and the season will be over in a couple weeks. However, he's passionate on the subject and determined to come up with more. If he hasn't by this Sunday, perhaps the following Sunday, and if not then, next year for sure.

Pawpaws or no pawpaws, Adam and company will have fresh punch this Sunday. If they don't get more pawpaws, Adam is contemplating a punch featuring peaches and flavored with lavender. Meanwhile, the falafel is wonderful. It's freshly made on premises from soaked garbanzos and served with tahini sauce on bread from Near East Bakery. Particularly interesting as well as delicious are the with mix or match toppings. Choices include beets with honey and lemon; cucumber and dill; basil and tomato; or cumin and onion. All are sourced and prepared on site.

PS: The author is a pawpaw fanatic, and it's possible that over time the coverage they receive here could seem out of proportion. The first post ever of Unique Culinary Adventures was about pawpaws, and today's post will certainly not be the last.

Favorite Chopped Salads in Baltimore Restaurants

2007-08-31T16:04:00.000-04:00

Consistently for several decades, Marconi's served up my favorite chopped salad of any Baltimore restaurant. Since Marconi's closed, two new restaurants have emerged to fill that void.

At left is P.F. Chang's "Nico's Favorite." The successful modern Chinese chain's menu describes it as "a salad full of surprises featuring cured ham, gorgonzola and candied walnuts." P.F. Chang's web provides a nutritional analysis and lists the ingredients as "lettuce mix (seasonal spring greens & iceberg), European gorgonzola cheese, walnut dressing, fresh roma tomatoes, cured ham, candied walnuts, dried cranberries, fresh lime juice, and garlic."

Pictured next to it is Fattoush, from Lebanese Taverna at 719 President Street, Inner Harbor East. According to the menu, its starting point is a basic Lebanese salad, where the main ingredients are tomato, cucumber, parsley, green peppers, and mint. Fattoush adds pita chips to the mix and is dressed with pomegranate extract, sumac, radish, and olive oil. In my opinion, the result is nothing short of sublime. It's the deep red sumac that most intrigues me. I'm not aware of another restaurant in the Baltimore area that uses sumac. Lebanese Taverna also offers a cocktail they call the Oasis, where sumac renders heavenly a mixture of gin and lemonade.

Wild Game Restaurant in Kennett Square, PA

2007-08-24T09:45:00.001-04:00

Elk, yak, llama, venison, kangaroo, and antelope are some of the wild delights you might find on the menu a little over an hour's drive northeast from Baltimore at the Half Moon Restaurant and Saloon, 101 State Street, in Kennett Square, PA. Interestingly, I learned about Half Moon in the July Delaware Today "Best of Delaware" feature, where it captured the critics' pick for "best wild game over the line."

Just a few minutes from Wilmington, Kennett Square is a tasteful old-school kind of town with more than its share of upscale restaurants. It bills itself the "mushroom capital of the world." The Kennett Square Mushroom Festival happens this year on September 8 and 9.

I visited Half Moon for a late lunch just a couple days ago. The environment is contemporary even with an elegant and long antique mahogany bar, black and white mosaic pattern floors, and relatively modern fans hanging from a dark painted tin ceiling. Past the bar is the main dining room. Above is an indoor-outdoor all-season rooftop bar and restaurant with the added attraction of being a great perch for sunsets. At 3 p.m. last Wednesday, the pace was slow, and being alone, I opted for a seat at the bar, which is renowned for its vast draft beer selection. Belgians are biggies here. One of them, Golden Carlous, is 21 proof. As my own designated driver, I deferred to iced tea.

My lunch was a cup of alligator gumbo with crawfish and sausage followed by a wild boar burger. The gumbo was one of the greatest gumbos of any kind I've ever tasted anywhere, including New Orleans. Distinguishing it was a particularly dark and heavy brown roux, perfectly cooked cubes of alligator, and sausage bits somehow rendered crisp. The wild boar burger arrived accompanied with lettuce tomato on side, along with bacon, and exotic mushrooms as extra requested toppings. The juicy meat was cooked both truly medium-rare, yet to light brown. Its flavor suggested both veal and beef, seemingly more delicate than either. Between two rolls, this was a great burger sandwich, despite my deliberate focus on the sublime essence of its principal ingredient.

Half Moon's wild game offerings vary from menu to menu, and are dictated less by season than some might expect. All meats are naturally raised and less fatty than beef. Management suggests that no game dish be cooked beyond medium rare. Also offered are Uraguayan beef, salads of tempting description, seafood dishes, and enough else to please just about anyone. Half Moon is definitely worth a trip.

Chilled Soup of Fresh Raw Tomatoes

2007-08-20T19:00:00.000-04:00

According to notes, the recipe responsible for the"Fresh Tomato Soup," pictured above was copied from the July, 1991 issue of Food & Wine Magazine. A recent check of the magazine's web site, however, failed to turn up anything like it. Extensive surfing of the Internet proved similarly futile. A distinctive quality is the use of fresh raw tomatoes, and the ricotta cheese works great. Here's the recipe, which is too good to be getting lost in time.

FRESH TOMATO SOUP

4 pounds juicy, ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
salt
1/4 cup fresh ricotta cheese
1/4 cup plain yogurt
small mint sprigs for garnish

In a food processor, puree half the tomatoes until smooth. Strain the puree into a large bowl, pressing solids with a rubber spatula to extract the pulp and juices. Repeat with the remaining tomatoes. Discard the skins and seeds. Season the soup with the lemon juice and salt to taste. Cover and refrigerate for several hours or up to 1 day. In a food processor, combine the ricotta and yogurt and puree until smooth,. Season with salt to taste. To serve, stir the soup and pour into 8 bowls. Garnish with 1 tablespoon of the ricotta mixture and a mint sprig.

Food & Wine Magazine, August, 1991

Jake Slagle's Southern Yellow and Green Pole Beans

2007-08-13T14:30:00.000-04:00

This basic Southern US technique works with any kind of string bean. However, it's quite special when pole beans are in season, particularly if both green and yellow are available at the farmers market. Most pole bean recipes call for removing the strings as a precaution against choking. Since doing so can be tedious and messy, you may choose instead simply to caution all who partake to eat consciously. Strings or no strings, here's the recipe:

SOUTHERN POLE BEANS

1 pound pole beans, yellow and green mixed if you can find them
1 medium onion, chopped
1/4 pound salt pork, diced
1 quart water

Bring the water to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the salt pork and onions, cover, and boil for 10 minutes. Add the beans, cover partially, and cook for about 30 minutes, or until beans are tender and most of the water has evaporated. Serves 4

Dining in Azores: Part 2">

2007-08-07T09:24:00.001-04:00

At left is blood sausage over pineapple from the restaurant just above where the ferry comes into Porto in Faial. Bacon with french fries and salad from that same spot is at right. Here pork follows seafood as the main subject of this second of a two part post regarding dining in the Azores.

Blood sausage is quite popular in the Azores. I've enjoyed it prepared several ways in the US and liked it here the most. Size of the and crispness accounted for their appeal. Serving blood sausage atop pineapple works well. Pineapples along with passion fruit are bountiful in the Azores.

The Azores is the first place I've ever seen "bacon" listed as an entree on a menu or served in slices a half inch thick. Not to be confused with pork belly, from which bacon is made, it arrived cooked through but hardly crisp. We were served bacon other places---on Pico---at breakfast, where it was undercooked by U.S. standards, but sliced thin. Normally, I like my bacon crisp, but when this thick, let it be juicy.

As for the salad and french fries, what you see is what you get. Nowhere during our visit, did I observe a dinner salad any more creative than the combination of a couple lettuce leaves with a bit of tomato and some shredded carrot. Potatoes are ubiquitous in the Azores, and based on our experience, better served boiled and mashed.

Here are a couple other culinary observations from Pico and Faial: All meat and seafood are cooked well done. Pastries are phenomenal, and not once did we partake of a beverage that came with ice.

Dining in the Azores: Part 1

2007-08-03T10:54:00.000-04:00

We'll get started with shellfish. Limpets are to the left, prawns to the right. These were two of the four dishes that I most enjoyed on a very recent all too brief visit to the Azores. The island was Pico and the purpose of the visit was a family wedding. Pico is one of the best destinations on earth for whale watching, and it is even better known for the mountain from which the island takes its name. At 7,713 feet above sea level, Mount Pico is the highest peak not only in the Portuguese Commonwealth, but within the entire Mid-Atlantic Range. Scaling Mount Pico along with finding and photographing several whales engaged a lot of time fo me that otherwise might have been devoted to checking out the culinary scene.

It should be worth mentioning that the restaurant serving the limpets also had whale soup on its menu. This was in Porto, the principal town on the neighboring island of Faial, to which we ferried over one day for lunch. Aware that no whales had been killed in the Azores since the mid-80's, I assumed my soup would include imported whale meat but no. What was listed as "whale soup" proved instead to be a vegetable soup that seemed quite conventional except for an inordinate amount of dill. Like hydrangeas, dill grows wild all over the Azores. The only justification our waiter could render for calling this"whale soup" was that that it was such a "strong" soup. Notwithstanding, the restaurant's limpets were great. Limpets look much like large barnicles, and the outsides of their shells are hairy. The flavor suggested to me a cross between whelk and the muscle of a quahog clam, though milder and more tender than either. My limpets were broiled with garlic. pimiento, and most likely some lemon juice and white wine.

Back on Pico behind the sport shop in the town of Magdalena is the Bounty Bar. For so simple a spot on this out of the way island, the prawns just might be considered a culinary masterpiece. The owner is German and seriously into cooking. He first sauted the prawns with onion and chopped lemon rind (probably pickled), then removed and set them aside. He added coconut milk, garam masala, finely chopped cashew nuts, garlic, tomato and almost surely some white wine to the pan, thus completing the sauce. It was the only evidence of culinary fusion encountered on our trip.

The Bounty Bar also had a special that evening: freshly caught parrotfish. Cut into fillets, its flesh was firm, white, mild-tasting, and most pleasing. Parrotfish is but one of more than 40 varieties of fish to be enjoyed in the Azores. Few of the species were familiar to me, though I would have liked to have had the opportunity and the time to try them all.

Before Leaving for Azores

2007-07-24T14:25:00.000-04:00

Though 900 miles offshore, the Azores Islands are still part of Portugal, and tomorrow Mrs. Yi and I are headed there via Toronto. Will clams be in the seafood stews for which the Azores are renowned? Perhaps, but more likely, if not for sure, limpets should be amongst the piscicultural offerings. Limpets are more like barnacles. Linguica, which is similar to chorizo, likewise red peppers are definite certainties. As for the Portuguese cuisine images above, the clams and chorizo from Food and Wine was prepared in our kitchen as directed at the link, while the chorizo with pimiento dish was the subject or a May, 2006, post here at Unique Culinary Adventures.

The Azores are a sizeable handful of different islands. While the basic cuisine on all of them is Portuguese, preparations can vary from island to island. We'll be on Pico, one of the relatively less populous islands. It is more famous for its mountain (Mt. Pico) than it is for its food.

Howerver, resarch suggests that Pico is a good place to enjoy Caldos de Peixe (fish broth), "Linguica con inhame,"(sausage with yams) "Torresmos de porco"(spareribs), and "Molha de carne" (?). More intriguing sounding dishes are said to be prevalent on other islands, but Pico is where they just might produce the best wine. "Vinto de cheiro" or Morangueiro is popular throughout the Azores, but Pico is home to the famous Verdelho, which was favored by the czars. As for liqueur, the "Licor de maracuja" (passion fruit liqueur) is known to have a world-class reputation. Hope I can bring some home.

Not until then, sometime in early August, will the next post go up. It will be about culinary experiences in the Azores. Stay tuned.