Bar Q

Bar Q, Anita Lo's new restaurant in the West Village, doesn't look like your average bbq restaurant. Everything is crisp and white - the walls, the seats, the linens. The food also isn't what you'd find in your average bbq restaurant...all of the dishes have an asian twist to ithem: baby back ribs with a korean-style sauce, kimchee seafood stew. Everything on the menu sounded inventive and promising, so I was expecting a lot. But, i was sorely disappointed. Every dish i had was underwhelming and slightly off, and at a minimum of $20 an entree and $11 for a small plate, that shouldn't have been the case. We started with the baby back ribs and the unagi and scallion fritters. The ribs were all bone and very little meat and what meat was therewas quite tough and chewy. The unagi and scallion fritters were extremely bland and tasteless and every bite was all dough and no fish. I might as well have been eating a greasy funnel cake with a slight hint of fish flavor.

I ordered the Tea Smoked Chicken with Sweet Rice and Chinese Sausage for my main entree and that was also mostly forgettable. The chicken was on the dry side and the skin was incredibly oily. The chicken was seasoned unevenly, some bites were bland and some bites were very salty. The dish came with a bed of sauteed chives, which were tasty but soaked in a puddle of residual oil from the chicken.

The only redeeming part of the meal was my cocktail. I got a bubble tea spiked with vodka and it was frothy, green and refreshing. I won't be coming back here for dinner, but I'd recommend stopping by for a nice drink at the bar.

Cajun-ish style Catfish

This is the first and only real meal Amar and I have made and eaten together since we moved into our new apartment last month...which is a little pathetic really. It's just so easy to get lazy and order take-out or go out to eat in this neighborhood now that I have so many delicious options right at my fingertips.

It was a very tasty and colorful meal...the stir-fried green beans and asparagus we just sauteed, and the mashed sweet potatoes were also pretty straight forward. The fish recipe came from Foodnetwork.com, courtesy of Emeril. For the sauteed vegetables, i first cooked 3 cloves of thinly sliced garlic in olive oil over medium heat for about 5 minutes, then i added the string beans and a pinch of water and cooked it over medium heat for about 7-8 minutes, with a cover over the skillet. Then I threw in the asparagus last and cooked everything for another 5-7 minutes, because those cook through pretty quickly. If the vegetables start to look a little dry, add some more olive oil.

For the sweet mashed potatoes, peel and dice the sweet potatoes into one inch pieces, boil starting in cold water for about 15 minutes, mash together with a few splashes of milk and a tablespoon of better...more milk if you like it creamier. Add lots of brown sugar, otherwise it'll taste slightly bitter.

Onto the fish. This was the first time i used a broiler to cook anything and the fish came out pretty well. Broiling the fish gave it that blackened char around the edges, but still retained the juiciness of the fish.

Ingredients:
2 large filets of catfish
3 pinches of salt
2 cloves of garlic, minced
generous amount of olive oil
1 teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves
1 lemon, juiced
1/4 cup of bread crumbs
1 tablespoons of paprika
1/2 tablespoon of garlic powder
1/2 tablespoon of black pepper
1/2 tablespoon of dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon of dried thyme

Directions:
mix all of the seasonings
Season the catfish with salt and seasonings on both sides
combine the olive oil, fresh thyme and garlic, spread over the catfish filets
drizzle the lemon juice over the filets
add the bread crumbs to the top of the filets
add some more olive oil over the bread crumbs
put the fish in the broiler for about 12-15 minutes (the directions said to flip the catfish, but that made the bread crumbs all soggy...so i wouldn't advise doing that)

Frankies 457

Last night, Sam and I had dinner around the corner from my house at Frankie's Spuntino. The meal was amazing, I ordered one of the best pasta dishes I've had in a long time. My linguine with fresh fava beans and tomato sauce tasted like bowl full of spring...the fava beans were bright green and tender, the tomato sauce was light and subtle. The pasta was cooked perfectly al dente with that great chewy texture. The dessert was possibly even better than the meal. I was initially opposed to ordering the red wine stewed prunes with mascarpone cheese, because i don't usually associate prunes with dessert, but Sam talked me into it. It. was. good. The mascarpone was so smooth and creamy, it literally melted in my mouth. It tasted like a thicker and creamier version of clotted cream. The red wine sauce was rich and only slightly sweet, which was the perfect compliment to the light flavor of the mascarpone. The prunes were sweet and meaty doubled as receptacle for scooping up the cheese. Oddly enough, this dessert felt more decadent than a piece of chocolate cake. The meal was great and i spied an outdoor garden that is going to be awesome when the weather gets warmer. Now i understand why there was a 45 minute wait at 8 o'clock.

New Kitchen!

My new kitchen. As you can see, I don't have much space to work with.

Broadway East

Whoah i haven't written a post in 4 months! Life got really busy and for about two months i was eating really crappy food like bland whole wheat pasta with semi-cold pasta sauce dumped on top. But I'm going to start posting more regularly now. So, last night I went to Broadway East with Ursula and Nikki after checking out the Cai Guo Qiang exhibit at the Guggenheim. Which, by the way, was really great. I'm really glad I got to see it before the show closes later this month. My favorite piece was the snake in the bag, aptly called "Snake Bag". Broadway East is situated at the far end of East Broadway, past all of the Chinese bakeries and shops and basement restaurants. The restaurant has a very simple, almost sparse decor - polished wooden floors, dark wooden tables and velvety red banquettes lining the sides of the main dining room. The restaurant is very dimly lit, with the only light coming from small round globes that appear to float down from the ceiling.

I was a little skeptical at first, $21 for a plate of vegetables? Seemed a little outrageous to me. But, the food turned out to be delicious. I ordered a dish that came with grilled polenta, bread crumb encrusted and fried portobello mushrooms, a ragout made of porcini mushrooms and sauteed leafy greens (said kale on the menu, but i'm pretty sure what i ate wasn't kale.) The polenta was the perfect consistency, the ragout had a rich and salty, but not completely overpowering flavor. The light sauteed greens balanced out the hearty ragout perfectly. Our pear crostata dessert was a little disappointing - there was too much crust and too little pear. The presentation of the dish was also unappealing, the caramel sauce was hastily drizzled around the plate, the crostata looked like it hadn't been formed perfectly before it was baked. That said, the other dishes on the dessert menu sounded really good, there was a spiced chai bread pudding and a fig and hazelnut tart.

Overall a very good experience. This is a good choice if you're in the mood for vegan/vegetarian food, but don't want to eat at some hippy crunchy restaurant. Broadway East presents haute hippie food in an upscale setting without a hint of patchouli scent.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

We had a little dinner party last weekend...I gotta mention Nikki's delicious butternut squash risotto...it was excellent. Creamy and starchy, with hints of sweetness from the butternut squash puree. I made roasted brussels sprouts...I tried to replicate The Smith's brussels sprouts, but it didn't have the same lemony flavor. But still, it came out pretty well, the flavor was mellow and almost sweet, with a bit of crunch from the charred outsides.

Ingredients:
2 lbs of brussels sprouts
3 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 lemon
salt and pepper

Directions:
- Preheat oven at 400 degrees
- Cut off the stems of the brussels sprouts and peel off the first layer
- Salt the brussels sprouts with 2-3 generous pinches of salt
- Combine olive oil with juice from half of the lemon
- Zest the lemon and add the zest to the olive oil/lemon juice combo
- Pour the olive oil/lemon juice combo over the brussels sprouts and mix so that it's all coated evenly
- Roast at 400 degrees for 40 minutes
- Shake the baking pan occasionally so that all of the sides are roasted

Beef Stew

This hearty beef stew is a great winter dish. It also freezes well, so you can make a big pot of it and eat it slowly over many weeks. Chop the potatoes and carrots into large chunks, so you get big meaty bites with each spoonful.

Ingredients:

2 pounds beef chuck for stew, cut into 1-inch cubes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons butter
4 medium carrots, peeled, halved and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 14 oz cane of chicken broth
1/2 cup dry red wine
2 8 oz cans of tomato sauce
1 box of baby Portobello mushrooms, chopped
5 red potatoes, diced
2 (14 1/2-ounce) cans reduced-sodium beef or chicken broth
1 bay leaf
handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
two pinches of dried thyme
two pinches of oregano

Instructions:
Season the beef cubes lightly with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons of the butter in a heavy 6-quart pot over medium heat. Brown the beef in two batches, for approximately 5-6 minutes per batch.

Scoop out the second batch of beef, then add the carrots and onions and raise the heat to medium-high. Cook until the onion starts to turn translucent, about 5 minutes.

Stir in the flour.

Add the chicken broth, wine, tomato sauce and herbs and bring to a boil

Simmer for 20 minutes

Add potatoes and mushrooms, simmer for another 45 minutes

Stir in parsley at the end