Crazy or Crazy-Awesome?

Basil, tomato, and mozzarella ice cream?

Frozen Caprese salad. Found in Hong Kong.

Fall Dinner

Sorry for the week-long blogvacay, but I had the swine flu, believe or not (the Boy chooses not to). Anyway, before I languished away on milkshakes and daytime television last week, I was feeling very flush with fall spirit. With all the crispness in the air, we hit the farmer's market and got to work in the kitchen. I made French Onion Soup, and the Boy grilled some pork tenderloin. For dessert, tarte aux pommes (apple tart).

The French Onion Soup was from our old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Pure nostalgia. Start with 3 large sweet onions, finely chopped. Then add 1/2 stick of butter. Let the onions sweat it out about 20 to 25 minutes, until transluscent. Add in around 4 cans of beef stock. And a few squirts of Worchestershire sauce. Around 1/4 tsp. Salt and pepper to taste. Let simmer, around 30 minutes or more.

Cut slices of a baguette, toast with shredded Gruyere (or Swiss) cheese atop. Then place "croutons" on the soup once poured into bowls or crocks. Add more cheese and broil the whole thing for a few minutes until cheese is melted and browned.

Once the soup and pork were ready, we headed out to the front porch. A little pinot noir, some sliced local Macoun apple, some Vermont sharp white cheddar, some baguette slices from Little Bakery, and the sliced pork. Quite a crudite platter. Then the soup, with toasted baguette slices acting as croutons for the Gruyere cheese. Very fall and very yum.

So yum, in fact, we didn't even make it to the apple tart. But now that I'm back to solid foods, I discovered the tart, when toasted a bit, drizzled with local raw honey and sprinkled with ground cinnamon, is a fantastic breakfast too.

Tarte Aux Pommes

2 large baking apples (like Macoun) cored, then very, very thinly sliced

1 sheet of frozen puff pastry (they usually come 2 to a box)

1/4 cup of butter

1/4 cup of brown sugar

Defrost the puff pastry and prepare according to the box directions (I know, I know, you can make your own pastry too). For mine, you just unrolled the pastry, let it defrost, pierced it all over with a fork, and let it sit in the fridge for 20 minutes or so.

Then you can cut the dough into a circle the size of your pie plate if you'd like. I just left mine as a sheet on a cookie sheet since it seemed like it wanted to tear and I wanted to make a big tart anyway (overzealous apple slicing). I placed the apple sliced decoratively on the pastry, then topped with little shavings of the cold butter and sprinkled the brown sugar. You can add your own spices too. Then cooked at 375 for 15 minutes or until the edges of pastry begin to brown. Very very simple and it retains the apple flavor unlike sugary, syrupy apple pies.

Pink Bakery Boxes

This article on Serious Eats answers a question I didn't even know I had.

You know how in the movies, people always have pink boxes for birthday cakes or pastries? Yet, growing up in the South, I never once saw a pink box from a bakery. No matter how much I wished for one, because it just seemed more sophisticated, or at least frivolous. I always just assumed there were some fancy schmancy bakeries out there that I never frequented (and there are, to be sure).

Anyway, Serious Eats enlightened me that pink bakery boxes actually came from Winchell's, which is a not-so-nice-actually-sort-of-divey SoCal doughnut chain. Heh. Apparently, a bunch of transplanted Cambodians went to work there fleeing the Khmer Rouge and somehow got the boxes changed from white because white is the color of mourning. Also, in a moment of sad reality about corporations and the creation of an air of desiriability about a product: they went with pink because it was cheaper and because grease stains don't show as well. Sigh. Such is the way of all vestiges of hauteur fed to us by Hollywood.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries

Largely due to the fact that Bentucci's is renovating their restaurant, the Boy and I found ourselves in Pittsford Plaza on a quest for dinner. On our way to dropping $20 a piece on our glutfest at the Wegmans buffet, I was confronted with a fact that had escaped my memory: Five Guys Burgers and Fries had opened in the PP about a month ago. So we headed over to check it out.

First thought, I love a place with so few options. Really. I hate when places try to anticipate nearly every type of diner inclination and serve nachos next to pasta next to steak next to Chinese (yes, it happens). A jack-of-all-trades is a master of none. In My Perfect Dining World, places would limit themselves to ten items or less. Do them well and people will either be open to the singular experience the chef/cook is crafting or know to skip out because they're not into it. This is really the whole philosophy behind prix fixe meals.

The Boy's first thought was the boldness of having so many boxes of peanuts in their shells lying around, considering the dangers of peanut allergy reactions (how is he the one thinking like a lawyer?).

I ordered the cheeseburger with everything, plus jalapenos. My norm when confronting any new burger is to order it "all the way." The Boy got the bacon cheeseburger with grilled mushrooms and grilled onions and barbeque sauce. We got an order of the cajun fries too. (Sidenote: someone ordered right before us and left to go run an errand before picking up their food. This apparently confounded the staff, which quickly went from a friendly "Order Up" to a Gestapo-like: "You there, what's your number? Are you sure? Are we sure it's 86 instead of 88? How can this be?" I almost ate the woman's food out of fear and guilt for it not being mine.)

So this place definitely trades in nostalgia (a la Johnny Rocket's or Steak and Shake or even Sonic). Once you order, you get a number, you get your fountain drink, and you wait for your food to come packed in a bag, regardless if you're just taking over to the tables on the other end of the room. The tables were a little littered when we were there, which reminded me of eating off picnic tables. They definitely wanted to bare bones in the decor and set up. Really commited to the idea of fast food and no frills and all that. Except with a nice long list of toppings to make up for only having burgers, hot dogs (and one grilled cheese which I'm sure is American cheese in a hamburger bun).

Five Guys has quite the reputation of being the best burger around. They make sure you're aware of this fact by plastering the walls with articles and quotes from The Washingtonian and the Long Island local paper, etc.

I have to say the meat quality was excellent. The bun could have better and could have been toasted. There definitely could have been less raw onions (coarsely chopped) involved -- but then again, I really shouldn't have ordered both raw and grilled onions (probably best not to go "all the way" here). The cheese was just American cheese. Basically everything here was good in the most basic sense of what a fast food cheeseburger is. Like a particularly good Wendy's, minus the drive-through. Except the medium-cut, skin-on fries, with Cajun spices, where much much better than Wendy's (which always mysteriously need salt, despite the fact that I don't add salt to anything else ever).

Oh, also of note: the regular is a double. I guess the little burgers are human-sized. Still, I ate the whole thing. And will probably skip all meals today because of it.

All in all, it reminded me of In and Out (a place I was never rabid about unlike most other Southern Californians). Of course, In and Out also has the gimmick of a secret menu, and milkshakes. And the burger's flavor also kept reminding of something I couldn't quite put my finger on, something that was buried so far deep that it was almost subconscious -- until this morning. It really tasted a lot like Rush's in Columbia, South Carolina (which used to be my favorite restaurant of all time). Of course, Rush's burgers are even better with their milkshakes. Moral of the story: start making shakes, Five Guys.

Not even close to Steak and Shake. But then again, Steak and Shake isn't even close to Rochester.


ADDENDUM: Just minutes after I posted this, Village Voice's food blog named Five Guys #6 in the ranking of the Best Fries in New York City.

Ming's

Ming's, at 1038 S. Clinton in Southwedge, has been consistently ranked as some of the best Chinese in town. So the other day, when the weather started to turn cooler and we were both feeling worn down and fluish to make something and too sweaty from working out to eat anywhere nice (like Chen Garden), we decided to try out a new place for some old familiar comfort food.

I ordered the General Tso's, the Boy got Bourbon Chicken. We each got fried rice and we also split a large Egg Drop soup. Once we'd ordered in the teensy restaurant, I decided it was best to air ourselves out outside rather than torture the other diners unfortunate enough to share our post-workout space. After about 15 minutes, our food was ready. And unfortunately, during that 15 minutes we did watch a lot of it being prepared -- which included at least 5 minutes of The Boy's Bourbon Chicken sitting on the very side of the cooking space while Larry, one of the cooks, cleaned out a wok, splashing water and whatever cleaning product ponderously close to the Boy's food. We'll just assume with such an open kitchen, free for all to inspect, that Larry really knows what he's doing and the Boy's plate was hygenically sound. He's still alive at any rate.

My General Tso's was a little goopy, with maybe not enough sauce on some parts (to remind you of the huge amount of breading that's involved) and then of course, tons at the bottom of the container. It was a passing Chinese dish, nothing great, and unfortunately served to remind me of how unnatural some of my favorite Chinese dishes are. Of course it looks nothing like what they serve in China, and it also looks nothing like anything that came out of a farm or the natural world (except the sliced bell pepper which tasted pretty fresh). Lots of breading, fryer oil, white sugar, and red dye.

The Boy ordered Bourbon Chicken largely because he wanted to avoid the things I just mentioned -- he didn't want something fried. The bite I tasted was just like any other mall Chinese/Japanese/Cajun outpost. Nothing remarkable, but not altogether disappointing either. Same for the fried rice, passable at best. No egg that I found, scant veggies, decent amounts of pork. Not much to remember really.

The egg drop soup couldn't hold a candle to Chen's (which always has a distinct soy sauce flavor that I've never seen anywhere else). It was too gelantious -- and being as I'm not a fan of eggs, this is a very disturbing quality. Too much of a semi-solid for me, without any depth of flavor, just a pepperiness. The Boy equated it to some kind of military-hospital-refugee camp substance used to keep people alive and to avoid malnutrition.

I'm not sure about the relationship this Ming's has with New Ming's on Monroe, but for my money, New Ming's is a much much better quality restaurant. It certainly (after the remodel) attempts to be a higher level -- with wine and beer, fancier dishes, brown rice, etc. I'm all for occasionally trips into the down and dirty, especially when it means you get something really tasty, but not in this case.

Dinner with the Band

IFC has a new series debuting Nov. 24 called Dinner with the Band. They just announced their line-up yesterday. Appearing with Tailor chef/owner Sam Mason (who may be the former owner by then), will be Les Savy Fav, Kid Sister and Flosstradamus, and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. Having seen all of these bands/DJs live, I think this has the makings of a great series. Though having seen the guy from Les Savy Fav shirtless at Coachella, I am less enthusiastic about the idea of watching him cook/eat and that heightening my desire to do the same.

Crazy or Crazy Awesome

Little Corner of Mine's Special Peanut Butter and Ketchup Noodle?

I'm all for peanut butter as its own food group, and darn, if this pad thai doesn't look downright mouthwatering. I just can't quite get there mentally.