Awful Falafal

I went to Georgetown Cupcakes (again!) and grabbed a falafal sandwich with Megan across the street at Quick Pita. The falafal was dry and there was so much sauce that it was dripping out of the foil. Ehh...will not be returning for the falafal.

What can 50 cents buy in the DC area?

Audrey and I went to a Neisha, a Thai restaurant in Tysons Corner today and it was yummy! I ordered the red curry beef (my normal Thai fare). It arrived on a huge plate, with the ingredients plated in a starfish pattern swimming in the delicious red curry sauce. Aside from the chunks of pineapple that I wasn't a fan of, it was pretty good spooned atop rice. Ah yes, the rice...it was the tiniest ice cream scoop of rice I ever did see and was engulfed immediately. So, this is what 50 cents will buy you in the DC metro:

Finding an Appropriate Dealer

I have a problem. A cupcake problem. I went to Red Velvet for the second time in the hopes that it would not disappoint at $3 a cupcake. Once again, they were sold out of popular flavors. I did get my hands on a chocolate-buttermilk cake with ganache frosting and a key lime cake with buttercream frosting. The chocolate was good, the key lime was a bit dry and tasted like I was eating a stick of butter slathered on top of the cake.



Next stop... Buzz Bakery in Alexandria.

8.5

"On a scale of 1-10, how do you rate my dish?" Chef Michael asked me today after I inhaled half of the meal he had prepared for us (white Al and me). The thought, "Uh oh...should I artificially inflate the score, so he doesn't make my life a living hell?" flashed through my head. He had prepared a Peruvian dish with deep-fried steak strips, topped with fries and a tomato, miso, soy sauce err sauce with some boiled broccoli tossed in there. The name of the dish eludes me right now. It's pictured below: As the salt in the dish was altering the ion-balance in my body, I said, "8.5, it's a little salty." Mycomments were met with a very hurt, shocked, disturbed and insulted look from him. Oddly enough,Al gave him the same score and feedback independent of my opinions.

Not-So-Pronto Pasta

I made pasta dough today for class, twice. The first time I did a hybrid recipe of the book's and Tyler's semolina recipe. It turned out to be a dry crusty mess. The second time, Chef Lipford made me follow the book recipe. You're supposed to build a volcano out of the dough and use a fork to slowly mix in the wet ingredients. The dough should not be sticky when you're done. I portioned the dough into four balls and put them in the refrigerator. The dough was then rolled out with a rolling pin, instead of the hand-crank pasta roller because it was a little too wet/sticky to go through. Clawson ended up using the noodles in a lasagna made with bechemel. This was the mise en place for the lasagna:

Eating in a Woodland

The second restaurant I tried for Restaurant Week (!) was Cedar. Niam made reservations and when Willette and I walked in, we had some reservations about the place. It turned out to be an excellent choice. I posted the dishes I tried below. Once again, I only had an iPhone camera and none of the pictures would have done the food justice. The Market salad was wonderful, I ate almost every last kernel on the plate, the pork was cooked perfectly and I gobbled down the swiss chard, and oh(!) the dessert. The cake was nice and moist and the sorbet was an excellent complement. I didn't try the avocado sauce, but I'm sure it would have been delicious.

Appetizer
Market Lettuce Salad | fennel | corn | tomatoes | parmesan | mustard-tarragon vinaigrette

Entree
Herb Crusted Pork Tenderloin | braised swiss chard | applewood bacon | roasted cherries

Dessert
Coconut Tres Leches Cake | avocado sauce | mango-coconut sorbet

First Stop for Restaurant Week

This week is Restaurant week, which means that people of the area can try fine dining restaurants for under $40 for dinner. I asked Chef Fleck what he would recommend for restaurant week, to which he replied, he doesn't eat out much anymore. He finally recommended DC Coast and Zola's (Nora's? not sure).
I made a reservation for 10:00PM on Opentable, which is my new best friend. We got there and circled around for another hour trying to find parking and finally got in about five minutes before the kitchen closed. The food was incredible! None my pictures could do the food justice. My fish came out slightly underdone and they grilled another one and packed up for me to take home.

Their partial menu for Restaurant week is posted below. I have put an asterix the ones that Willette and I ordered.

DINNER - $35.09
Includes your choice of the Appetizers listed below.

You may choose any of the Entrees on the Dinner Menu.

Appetizer Selections
Mixed Green Salad
Caesar Salad
Soup Du Jour
Heirloom Tomato and Melon Gazpacho
*Local Sweet Corn and Yellow Pepper Soup
Fried Green Tomatoes - Charred Eggplant Sauce, Cherry Tomato-Basil Compote

Dessert Selections
*Vermont Goat Cheese Cheesecake Brulee - Pistachio Croccante, Strawberry-Limoncello Compote
*Local Peach Crumble - Toasted Almond Anglaise
Warm Chocolate Cake - Spiced Blackberry Jam, Bittersweet Chocolate Sauce

A Four Hour Tour

So much happened today! In Chef Lipford's class we went on two field trips out on Landover, MD. First was Metropolitan Meats, they are a distributor of meats and whatnot, but also break down meats into further cuts as their customer desires. We went into all their warehouses and processing facilities, which were cold and empty, respectively. Two primary lessons that I learned lobsters can be stored in hibernation mode, and crabs have to be used within 12 hours of catching them. Crabs do not last.
That's the enormously unsexy lobster tank.

We also got to see their dry aging room. Dry aged meat is must more expensive than wet aged meat because of the longer aging time and the loss of moisture reduces the poundage of the meat. The temperature, humidity and ozone (?) levels are critical to the aging of meat and they actually had alarms go off if the meat dropped below the required limits. Did I mention that it was COLD? I thought I was going to freeze to death.
That was a couple slabs of meat slowly decaying on a rack.

After we finished up at Metro, we moved on to the Whole Foods Kitchen. This was their commissary (main kitchen for the mid-Atlantic area. They told us that they actually employee chefs to work in their store and in their commissary as an R&D chef (music to my ears)! The facility was like home-cooking on an industrial scale.

Answers Defined

Finally! A definition of molecular gastronomy that I can understand!

The 'molecular' in molecular gastronomy has the same definition as it does in molecular biology. The similarity is intentional, because chemistry and physics are at the core of this discipline - from Nature magazine

Show me the money!

Had a pretty great brain storming session today for the culinary club. I would love to raise exuberant amounts of money for the club so that A) we have money to purchase supplies for competitions and entry fees B) can pay for tee-shirts, aprons, etc to help identify ourselves, C) sponsor trips to cool foodie places and D) possibly even start offering scholarships. We are going to host a chili cook-off next quarter, possibly have some knife skills and molecular gastronomy workshops, and do some volunteer work. We earned a little over a hundred with the The Ultimate Cupcake Challenge. My goal is to raise maybe up to $1000 by the end of the year? We'll see!

Evil, Pure and Total Evil

The Japanese madoline is the bane of my existence. I hate the thing, yet I loathe, I mean love the thing. I use it almost daily and without fail, someone always tries to teach me their method for using the medieval contraption. "Double glove it", "use a fork", "count to five then readjust", "ride it along the edge of the board" and several other tips. Perfectly sliced everything each time, except for when it clips your nails and fingertip off with it.

Yea, I screamed some expletives today, but not when I sliced my finger. No, the cursing and yelp of pain came when I put the blood clotting agent on it. Only after I put it on, did I read the little warning: may feel a burning sensation for 30 seconds when applied.

Ultimate Cupcake Challenge!

Got out of work today, almost had to work a double, but Chef Matt came in and basically told me not to come back in after the challenge. Which left me ample time to go to school and help set up for the judging of the Ultimate Cupcake Challenge!

Chef Figarella's (the one the foreground) cupcake was disqualified because he had a student enter it for him. Disqualified, but still delicious!
Interesting selection of cupcakes, below are two of the more intriguing ones.

L-R: maple bacon and fig

Accountability

Today was my first full on day working with Chef Michael.
"If it's not labeled and dated, it's going in the trash."
"If you bring up stuff and it is not used by the end of the night, that's when you'll be in trouble."
"Make me a ________."

One of the thing he requested I make for him on a daily basis (which I'm sure he'll soon forget to ask for) was a chicken sandwich. So, I started to make one, got as far as putting the chicken on the grill and he took over from there. Need to coat the chicken with oil and salt and pepper the marinated chicken breast before throwing on the grill. Serve with avocado mash (avocado mashed with olive oil and salt) and chipotle mayo. Oh and he likes his Caesar salads drenched in dressing.

Working for him is not as bad as I had anticipated. He has implemented some good ideas and items in the kitchen are more organized now. You can almost say mise en place!