We had a great mini vacation visiting my parents in Florida...I say mini because who can actually feel that they are on vacation when visiting their parents? We were there for four days which was just enough time. One night we wanted to explore on our own, much to my mother's chagrin since she had a pork roast all set for that night. Greg and I left in the afternoon and went shopping. When we were hungry, we both decided not to try any of the restaurants on US41, which were either huge Italian eateries in pastel stucco buildings, or big chain places like Applebees and Ruth Chris. Its hard in Sarasota to find a restaurant with some charm, but we did it. We drove through the historic Burns Arts District where there are cute bungalows with overgrown front yards and huge trees arching overhead and found a bungalow with tikki torches lit outside, white christmas lights around the windows and a warm cozy look to it, so we stopped. Keep in mind that this was Tuesday, so the place was empty...and I mean, out of 30 tables, we were the only ones in the place. It was a bit steamy outside, but otherwise a beautiful night, so we sat outside and soaked in the chaaaam. The restaurant, called Le Cafe, is on 238 South Links Ave. We were fawned over by the server who gave us all the service we wanted, but also left us alone outside for good long stretches. Greg had the tomato, basil, and mozzarella stuffed meatloaf with a red wine reduction sauce and it was fantastic. Apparently it is a favorite of regular diners. I had an osso bucco risotto that was nice, but a bit soupy, so the texture was a bit off. What was great was having a nice meal in Florida where the food is made by hand rather than by Sysco. The wine, a merlot / shiraz blend, was very smooth and quite nice.

We then walked down main street in Sarasota and popped into a gelateria and had tasty servings of gelato. We took a late night drive to Saint Armands Circle on Longboat Key to window shop. What a very nice night indeed.

Back to cold Maine

Enjoy,
Seth

I just returned from auction viewing down in Boston. My friend Christine and I went to Skinner kind of late in the day and decided to stay downtown and have dinner. I picked her up at the airport and waited over an hour for her to land because of all those winds we had on Saturday. Chris was so happy to see me that she invited me to dinner and I accepted. We bumped into some collegues at Skinner and one suggested a great restaurant on Charles Street, close by and inexpensive by neighborhood standards. So we called for to say that we were just 5 minutes by foot and would they hold a table for us (no reservations) Ted, who recommended the place, was really familiar with the menu, which worked out great. We arrived at a non descript door to what we would term in Chicago, a garden restaurant, meaning one that was in the basement. And voila, we were at Artu at # 89 Charles Street. (Beacon Hill Location) This restaurant is not kind to tall people. I had to slump my shoulders a bit so my head wouldn't hit the ceiling. It is warm and inviting and extremely friendly.

We ordered a good bottle of Chianti (the most expensive wine on the menu is $58.00) and the vegetable antipasto which came heaping with gorgeous fresh squash, zucchini, carrots, green beans, and fried eggplant, drizzled in oil and perfectly grilled.
For dinner, I had the tortolini with sage butter and cheese sauce which was heavenly, though I do regret not going with my gut choice with was veal and gnocci. My two dinner companions both had the breaded chicken stuffed with prosciutto and spinach.

The meal was fantastic, the company scintillating, and the staff, so friendly and warm....all with no entree costing over $16.00. This is my kind of place. Sign me up again, I'm a regular now.

Enjoy,
Seth

Eureka, I've discovered a cool trick for my pizza dough. 1/2 cup corn meal in the dough makes it super crispy on the outside and still moist and chewy on the inside. Two packs of dry yeast into a cup of 120 degree warm water and let steep for 10 minutes. pour into bowl having 1 3/4 cups flour, salt to taste, rosemary to taste and 1/2 cup corn meal. Stir around with a fork until combined and then add about 1/4 cup olive oil and mix the rest by hand, kneading right in the bowl until elastic. If dough becomes sticky add more olive oil. When done, seal bowl with plastic wrap and set in warm place to rise for at least 1 hr.

When at least doubled in bulk turn out onto oiled cookie sheet with sides and work into corners. Add a drained can of delmonte organic diced tomatos, your favorite toppings and grated chedder cheese on top. (I used left over cheese from our last cocktail party, it was a particularly dry Irish Chedder from Dublin that tasted really good melted). Cook until dough is golden brown.

I'm off on the road today for work...don't panic food fans, I'll be back. Also giving you advanced warning that I'm leaving Monday for a week...might try and post while I'm gone, but the sun might lure to the beach instead. :-)

Enjoy,
Seth

Greg and I had one of the best lunches we've had in a long time on Valentine's Day. We decided to do something different to celebrate and be together with the dogs, cause going out to dinner on the biggest amature dining night of the year just doesn't appeal to me. Its another hallmark holiday as far as I'm concerned (though I did go out and find the biggest box of candy in the shape of a heart I could find at Reny's). We decided to take a hike up Mt. Megunticook in Camden and have a picnic at the top. Crazy you might say, but true. It was about 35 degrees and beautifully sunny, so we made sammiches from the pot roast I had cooked a few days before, added lots of mayo and jalapeno cheese, brought water and oranges and turkey hot dogs for the pooches and off we went. We haven't really been hiking that hard since the summer, and the snow made it more difficult, but is was truly amazing. I only wish I had brought my camera! We were the only ones up there which was suprising but fantastic, since we could unleash the hounds and really move on. It took us about an hour to reach the top, about 1/2 mile above the cross at Maiden Cliff and there on top we found the best spot, a natural bench out of the wind with a back support. I could have stayed there for hours and stared out at the view which spanned about 200 degrees from the ocean to Appleton Ridge and beyond. We pulled out our smooshed sammies and had the most glorious meal while the dogs ran around and did face plants in the snow (their favorite) and came over occasionally for hot dog treats.

The way down was treacherous and slippery and my knees still haven't recovered. 7 miles on the bike at the gym helped a bit yesterday, but I am still sore in the knees and groan and ache coming up the stairs.

Enjoy,
Seth

never put bacon in mac and cheese...its a sin!

never order your Thai food at spicy #5, you can't taste anything

never put mashed potatoes on your pizza

always make sure your turkey is thawed COMPLETELY before cooking it

always check to make sure you remove those packs of innards from your turkey before you put it in the oven

try and replace your spices at least every few years

throw away those bottles of red hots and sprinkles used for Christmas cookies after 3 years

never wait more than 20 minutes for a table at a restaurant...go somewhere else.

always sautee in 1/2 butter and half olive oil...it tastes so much better

nobody ever cooks better than you in your own kitchen

everyone likes soup

never cook when you don't feel like it...order out instead!

Enjoy,
Seth

While Greg and I were in New York we went to see Brokeback Mountain, which, by the time we got popcorn and sodas, cost us like $35.00. anyway, I liked the movie, loved the short story so much more...am a HUGE fan of Annie Proulx's work partially because she went to Colby. Anyway, I had been warned by many of my straight friends that this was such a powerfully moving film and that it made them think about it for a long time. I went in prepared to be awestruck and came out thinking it was a beautiful love story between two people...a bit Romeo and Romeo...textbook forbidden love case with nice scenery. I spoke with a lesbian friend and she had the same reaction...no big deal straight friends, its the way life is with us too....
We were starving after the movie and walked up to the Empire Diner on 61st and 1st ave for patty melts and fries. Nothing better than patty melts on rye bread with fries. The diner was almost empty and the food was not memorable, so I would recommend trying some other place i the hood instead.
I urge all of you to see brokeback if you haven't yet. If nothing else, it really reveals that love transends all else. We can all feel it and it shouldn't be a sin in the eyes of anyone.

Feeling a bit philosophical tonight. Certainly don't feel like cooking, but I must see what there is in the fridge for Valentine's dinner.

Enjoy and happy Valentiny's day
Seth

So I stole 3Tides asiago dip idea and served it last night and I've never seen 6 people devour a bowl of something so fast. I messed with the recipe a bit and here is what I came up with: 3/4 cup mayo, 1 cup sour cream, 1 cup plus of asiago cheese, 1 or 2 jalapenos choppped, 3 cloves fresh garlic and fresh ground black pepper. Whip all these up in a bowl and let sit in fridge for the day to meld and get cold. Pop in oven and bake at 350 until top is brown. Serve with slices of toasted french bread brushed with garlic olive oil and fresh pepper. mmmmm

Got raves for the rest of the dinner too, which consisted of old standbys like beef wellington, roasted potatoes, sauteed butternut squash. People are amazed when they get any sort of home cooking because no one cooks anymore!

Enjoy,
Seth

Saturday night was the last night open for 3Tides until St. Partrick's Day, so we went down to say so long for the next five weeks. It was quiet when we got there and both David and Sarah found a rare moment to sit at our table with us. It was David's step-father's birthday, and so that was a festive treat to rib Phil and sing him happy birthday.
We tried the Spicy Asiago dip which was Sarah's contribution for the specials board. It was awesome and she gave me the recipe which I'll make tonight for our dinner party. I would change the proportions a bit so there is less mayo, hopefully making it less oily. Essentially its mayo, cheese, sundried tomatos, mushrooms, jalapenos and sour cream. The thinly sliced garlic french bread that came along with it was a perfect accompanyment.
Other than that, I had a spicy sausage quesadilla, which was more smoky and strong than spicy, not bad, but not was I was looking for.
Good travels to David who braved the snow storm yesterday by getting himself to Boston and on a plane to Ireland for a week. He called me from the airport to say that his flight would be leaving...a miracle. Have fun David!


Its about 6am and I'm about the start preparing dinner for tonight. I opened my big mouth a few weeks ago and told a friend who is moving that I would just love to make beef wellington for her since she has never had it. Well that morphed into a full blown dinner party complete with two celebration cakes, a flourless chocolate cake for her (which Greg will make) and a carrot cake for her husband. The celebration is of their time together. She is leaving town and he is staying here. How wierd is that?

Enjoy,
Seth

Its 6:30 am and Greg and I have both been up since about 3am with insomnia. Of course now I am getting tired and so will probably go back to bed or go to the gym...but its like 2 below out and, well, BRRRRRRRRRR! No wonder the dogs are still buried under the covers.

Thinking this morning about the restaurants in NY I visited with friends or as business dinners. An auctioneer in NH threw a big party at a rustic French restaurant on 56th and 2nd called Sans Coullotes, which I of course translate to "Without Pants" which was pretty apropos considering the group of folks there. Lots of drinking and waving of chicken legs from the peanut gallery. I walked in and an old boss of mine from 15 years ago was there. She is a big time Chicago auctioneer, but she wasn't invited to the party...wierd to see her there after so many years and wierd to see her slink out when the host kind of made a scene about her being there. Anyway.....1/2 way through dinner I realized that I had left the iron on in the apartment, so I dashed up, fled in a cab, turned the iron off in the apartment and dashed back to the party...my roast chicken was still warm too. The place was good but the whole scene was so surreal that I can't really review the food since it was a preset menu..but I had to share the iron story.

A few nights later some old friends took me to Patsys Pizza on 69th and 2nd. Its a very convenient place for the neighborhood, very hipster place to take your family and babies if you are a young upper east sider. Personally, I would rather have real New York Pizza from Rays or someplace else. Trendy pizza has its place, but not in the pizza capital of the world. I can't believe that by the time we left, there was a waiting line of about 40 minutes....I just can't imagine that anymore. I have a tough time standing around waiting for a table for an hour in an overpriced, crowded restaurant. Gimme the diner down the street and a patty melt with fries and I'll be so much more content.

Enjoy,
Seth

Made pot roast the other day for Greg so he can have pot roast sammiches for lunch during the week. I took the broth, strained it, separated out the fat and had a beautiful beef broth to which I added lentils and carrots. It didn't make much more than two bowls full, but it was a perfect treat for me. Tres hearty, but healthy too.

For a soup today, I thawed some frozen chicken stock and added it to two Yukon Gold potatoes, a bunch of cut up baby carrots and a diced leek with garlic. Then added some yellow curry, salt and pepper and let it simmer down and cook. When tender, I added a bunch of fresh baby spinach, and a broccoli head and cooked for a bit longer then ran the whole thing through a blender to puree. It was a healthy alternative to cream of spinach soup and hugely tasty.

Enjoy,
Seth

I was reading our local online paper www.villagesoup.com and found that they have a new auction site where lots of restaurants I never knew exitsted seem to be offering gift certificates for food. The White House, a B&B in Belfast, has a dinner menu on the weekends. The Mermaid Restaurant at the Homeport Inn in Searsport is another place I've never heard of....jeez, I think ole' Maine Foodie has to get out more. Anyway I am tempted to bid. Dinner for two with a value of $50.00? hmmmm sounds like a bargain, I wonder what the fine print says!

Enjoy,
Seth

Amidst my rambles about our trip through NY, I wanted to stop and add a review of the Cedar Crest Motel Restaurant in Camden. We stopped there the other day after hiking the hounds on some coastal mountain land trust trails. Hungry and tired, we walked in and immediately noticed the changes from the "diner" it used to be. The kitchen has been closed in, save for a window to the pizza oven. The new walls have been painted a great deep yellow color. The owners put in a pizza and bread oven and hired a pizza chef. I have to tell you that the pizzas are fantastic. The crusts are hand thrown and have a great texture I had a sausage pesto pizza and Greg had fish and chips which he said was soggy and not as good as it used to be. That aside, the place was packed, almost every table was taken up. The establishment was also giving out samples of crusty artisan bread that they were baking on the premises. $3.00 a loaf and it was really very good.

Nicely done Cedar Crest.

Enjoy
Seth

Ok, ok, here I am. Did you all email each other and decide to inundate me with emails about my not posting for weeks and weeks? It was very touching to get so many emails in the last few days asking where I was and if I was alright. Thanks, I'm fine...its just winter here and there are projects to get done. Greg and I were in New York for a week and made dinner at home just one night...meaning that there is a lot to discuss...now if I could just remember the names of the restaurants!

The first night we were in New York, our friend Joan, of Joan and David, which is how she introduces herself, took us to this marvelous Greek restaurant called Pilos. It is down in alphabet city on 7th between 1st and A, an area where I used to live when I was just out of college and interning at a museum in NYC. Well let me tell you, that neighborhood has changed a bit. Its very swank now, the chic hip urban place to live...yuck.
The restaurant's entrance is very unassuming. When you walk in, you are enveloped by the warmth of the place. The owners comissioned a local potter to make hundred and hundreds of terra cotta vessels which they hung from the ceiling all tight together. Some have light fixtures installed inside the jugs and vases. The tables are close together and I was struck by the fact that there were two greek couples eating at the table next to us. The food was incredible. We ordered a bunch of appetizers, including stewed fava beans, broiled cheese, marinated, grilled prawns, hearty meatballs in savory sauce and a grilled vegetable platter. It was enough food to feed an army. We were completely sated and rolled ourselves into a cab after dropping Joan off at her place.
For any reader who might remember wearing Joan and David shoes or clothes, know that Joan is well and is now a professor at Columbia School of International Business. As she likes to tell it, she picked me up at Sotheby's one afternoon several years ago when I had my head under a chest of drawers. She came over to inquire why the chest had such a bold auction estimate. We ended up having lunch and have been great friends ever since.

Enjoy,
Seth

Its been a peanut butter and mac and cheese kind of winter so far. We have both been super busy and really haven't done anything but work work work and grab some grub in between. I think there were about 3 days where there was just peanut butter and pumpernickle in the fridge.
Well now that my three week holiday binge is over (I get an extra 7 days due to my birthday week--hey you grab what you can in life, right?) I have gone back to the gym and started to eat better. I just treated myself to a gob of peanut butter on artisan bread because I'm just home from the gym.
I used to be a raving Skippy super chunk fan but then decided I wanted my peanut butter's only ingredient to be peanuts! I think Skippy's first ingredient is corn syrup. I made the switch to Teddie's crunchy. It takes a long time to get used to, but I can't go back, its so good now.... maybe I'll peel an orange now...sigh!

Enjoy,
Seth

Greg has a friend who buys him really fashionable clothes for Christmas every year. Usually she is spot on for his style. This year however, she came up with a John Galiano hunting jacket with pleather highlights and huge, ugly pockets, prompting Greg to remark upon opening the package "guess the old girl has finally gone 'round the bend!"
We took a trip to Boston yesterday to return the coat to Saks for a refund. I have never in my life been treated as poorly by shop girls and shop boys as I have at the Saks in Boston. I mean what rock did these "fashionistas (insert giggle here)" crawl out from so they could be snotty to the public? These people work on commission! We left with Greg's credit vowing to spend it in New York next week at the Saks there....at least you expect to be treated like some gum on the foot of a bug in NYC, but in Boston?????
Well, after an exhaustive day of trying on clothes that cost more than my stove, we decided to get a bite of cheap Thai or something and ended up at Chili Duck across the street from the Prudential Center. Why do all Thai restaurants have to get the flashiest, tackiest decor to put on the walls...I mean is there a craptastic catalog sent out to all the Asian restaurants with framed wrapping paper and sparkly velvet paintings of pagodas for sale? Yikes!
We decided on an appetizer from the authentic Thai menu, so we chose Nom Tok, which is a spicy pork in a ginger, basil, vinegar sauce. Man, it was great! Came with a beautiful orchid blossom on the side. I could have eaten that for lunch, but we went to the regular menu for that and were a bit disappointed. I had yellow chicken curry with vegetables and potatoes and it was nice, and somewhat hot, but not the best. Greg had another chicken dish with hot basil leaves that was ok, but not as hot as he was looking for.
But, for 30 bucks with tip in downtown Boston, you can't beat the price. The service was great too. There was never anytime where we had to wait for anything. I'd go back, but I would order off the small authentic menu instead.

Enjoy,
Seth

My birthday was last Saturday (no cheers, just throw money...) Anyway, I ceaded control of the kitchen to Greg who asked several people over and made the whole dinner while I drove to Southern Maine and back for work! When I got home, he was just in the throws of making a NY cheesecake with Chocolate cookie crust...it was amazing and totally decadent. For dinner he whipped up a very spicy and festive sausage and chicken jambalaya. We sang the Jambalaya song for days whenever we had leftovers Replace "Tonolayo" with Jambalaya and you have a song about stew! (There's an accompanying dance, but I think I've shared enough already)
He also made the best Tuscan flat bread with rosemary and other herbs all over the top.

I may retire my New Wusthofs and go to the Islands!!!

Enjoy,
Seth

Greg says: Cheesy, tasty, texture is like...like...vomit you can eat with a fork! and with that he gave me a huge cute grin...what am I supposed to do with that???? Anyway, so I guess lots of cheese can't hide the blandness of the shepard's pie...musta been the absence of corn. Oh well, Sigh...back to the recipe books for me.

g'night and enjoy!
Seth

Ahh back to the kitchen after being sick and sick of making food after the holidays. Tonights gourmet meal is something a bit fancier that what we term SIAP (S**t in a pot to be a bit more on the ball) Its my version of Shepards Pie. I boiled some purple potatoes and the rest of the Yucon Gold that I had (skins on of course) and then sauteed scallions with garlic until tender, threw in some yellow peppers and then about a lb of ground turkey and simmered until just done. While this was going on, I whipped up a rou with butter and a bit of flour and browned it for a few minutes in our new saucier pan that our neighbor Tangie gave us (its so awesome...Italian design and NOTHING sticks) then poured a 1/4 cup of white wine in the rou with equal part milk and let cook on low simmer while I stirred in salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary. Last was a touch of colby-jack cheese to make it creamier.
After adding carrots and lima beans to the turkey and stirring for a while, I added fresh asparagus and took it off the heat. Scraping the mix into a casserole, I then poured over the creamy cheese mixture and let it sit while I finished the mashed taters (skins on for extra vitamins!) with garlic, salt, and butter. Add to the top and then grate some more cheese over the top for colla as we say in New Yawk.
Hey, if it doesn't taste good, at least it tastes cheesy!

I'll let you know Greg's comments tomorrow in a new feature called "Greg Says:"

Enjoy,
Seth
Hey and by the way....if you don't click the ads up above, I can't take the local Mainefoodie readers out for ice cream until at least 2009!

Just emerging from a cold today, couple that with the holidays and having to spend 5 days with my family, I have left off posting for almost a month. I must say that I haven't been inspired to cook anything new lately and am loathe to go out to restaurants during the season. So, I ve been reading about food instead. This article was in the NYTimes today and I totally agree with it.

I think I've explained that Mondays are my night off as Greg is off playing mah jongg with the girls. No cooking for me except to make my favorite...mac and cheese with chedder cheese and lots of butter and salt and pepper. Its simply the best.


Macaroni and Lots of Cheese
By JULIA MOSKIN
MACARONI and cheese is just the kind of all-American, old-fashioned home cooking I was not raised on.
New York City in the 1970's was a hotbed of culinary radicalism. Food-forward parents like mine served dinners of homemade falafel, Mediterranean fish stew or stir-fried beef with broccoli. To me, dishes like spaghetti and meatballs, mashed potatoes with gravy and macaroni and cheese seemed exotic and unattainable.
Naturally, this is where my greatest passions lie as a cook. And after the frenzy of holiday cooking, a simple dish like macaroni and cheese is just what I want to make now.
Lacking a family recipe, I turned to cookbooks for guidance. A strange substance called "white sauce" cropped up again and again. Bread crumbs, Worcestershire sauce and alien cheeses like smoked gouda and parmigiano also kept finding their way in. None of the recipes came close to my fantasy of what the dish should be: nothing more than tender elbows of pasta suspended in pure molten cheddar, with a chewy, golden-brown crust of cheese on top.
While reading the following passage in a 20-year-old cookbook called "Simple Cooking," the problem became clear:
" A good dish of macaroni and cheese is hard to find these days. The recipes in most cookbooks are not to be trusted...usually it is their vexatious infatuation with white sauce, a noxious paste of flour-thickened milk, for this dish flavored with a tiny grating of cheese. Contrary to popular belief, this is not macaroni and cheese but macaroni with cheese sauce. It is awful stuff and every cookbook in which it appears should be thrown out the window."
The book's author, John Thorne, still adheres to this position, but said that he has largely given up the fight. "Starting at about the turn of the 20th century, there was a huge fashion for white sauce in America - chafing-dish stuff like chicken à la king, or creamed onions," he said last week. "They were cheap and seemed elegant, and their legacy is that people choose 'creamy' over everything else. But I maintain that macaroni and cheese should be primarily cheesy."
Marlena Spieler, author of a forthcoming book, "Macaroni and Cheese" (Chronicle), agreed that most recipes simply do not have enough cheese. "I believe in making a cheese sauce and also using shredded cheese," she said.
But she refuses to forgo white sauce altogether. "You need a little goo to keep the pasta and cheese together," she said. Having made a global study of the subject, she ticked off a list of alternative binders: mascarpone, crème fraîche, eggs, heavy cream, egg yolks, cottage cheese, butter and evaporated milk, which she deems a little too sweet but "delightfully trashy."
Like me, Ms. Spieler believes that macaroni and cheese, which is often served alongside fried chicken or barbecue, deserves pride of place as a main dish. "I love it so much that I want to focus on it," she said. A crisp green salad and a glass of wine turn mac and cheese into a meal, she added.
I first made Mr. Thorne's recipe, a step in the right direction: it combines a whole pound of cheddar cheese with half a pound of macaroni. But the method, which entails taking the dish out of the oven every five minutes to stir in more cheese, is tiresome. And so, armed with the knowledge that a seemingly outrageous 2:1 ratio of cheese to macaroni is indeed possible, I set out in search of the ideal recipe.
At cheese counters across New York City, complex blends of pungent, unaged, rind-washed and cave-ripened cheeses have been devised for makers of macaroni and cheese. Rob Kaufelt, who owns Murray's Cheese in Greenwich Village, counsels a 30-50-20 blend of Swiss Gruyère, young Irish cheddar and Parmigiano-Reggiano, or a blend of English cheddars. At Artisanal, cooks are steered toward the softness of Italian fontina and Welsh Caerphilly.
These are all indisputably glorious cheeses. But they do not all belong in a casserole dish. An impromptu focus group of children living in my apartment building showed a strong preference for the cheddar family. Ultimately, I found, the dirty little secret of an honest macaroni and cheese is often American cheese.
American cheese is simply cheddar or colby that is ground and emulsified with water, said Bonnie Chlebecek, a test kitchen manager at Land O'Lakes in Arden Hills, Minn.
"The process denatures the proteins in the cheese," she said, "which in plain English means that it won't clump up or get grainy when you melt it. With natural cheese, it's much harder to get a smooth melt." The cheese industry and the Food and Drug Administration call a cheese "natural" if it has been produced from milk, as cheddar and mozzarella (and virtually all other nonindustrial cheeses) are.
Plain American cheese, labeled pasteurized process cheese, contains the most natural cheese and is the best for cooking. American cheese derivatives are made from cheese and additives like sodium phosphates (acids that promote melting), nonfat dry milk and carrageenan. In descending order of their relationship to natural cheese, they are cheese food, cheese spread (such as Velveeta) and cheese product.
Daphne Mahoney, the Jamaican-born owner of Daphne's Caribbean Express in Manhattan's East Village, makes a wonderfully dense version of macaroni and cheese that combines American cheese with extra-sharp cheddar. Macaroni pie is hugely popular in the Caribbean, especially on islands like Jamaica and Barbados that once received regular stocks of cheddar from other members of the British commonwealth: Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
"We put a little pepper in it to spice it up," she said. "But as long as you don't make the macaroni soggy, and you use plenty of cheese, it will be good."
The macaroni must not be slippery and soft, but firm and substantial. This is not the time to bring out your whole-wheat penne and artisanal orecchiette: elbow pasta is the way to go.
One of the most surprising recipes I tried called for uncooked pasta. Full of doubt, I mixed raw elbow noodles with a sludge of cottage cheese, milk and grated cheese. The result was stunning: the noodles obediently absorbed the liquid as they cooked, encasing themselves in fluffy cheese and a crust of deep rich brown.
The last decision - to top or not to top - is easily dispensed with. Resist the temptation to fiddle around with bread crumbs, corn flakes, tortilla chips and other ingredients that have nothing to do with the dish. When there is enough cheese in and on top of your creation, a brown, crisp crust of toasted cheese will form naturally. There is nothing more delicious.
The moral of the story: When in doubt, add more cheese.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

So we are having a pot luck Christmas party on Saturday night and I have been too busy to think about it, much less decorate the house for the holidays. Its Thursday and I better get cracking. Since we are leaving for Christmas and going to Florida, we decided not to get a big tree, so sometime today between thawing pipes and making food I have to go cut a tree from somewhere. Anyway, decided to make my life complicated by making a buche de noel for the first time. My mom is a pro at these and hers are so festive. They are kinda corny, but do bring a smile to everyone's face when they see it, especially decked out with merangue mushrooms.

I'm not a fan of buttercream frosting, so I am going to make mine a bit more decadent and use parts of four different recipes and see how it comes out. I'm going to make an orange spice sponge cake, and make orange cream cheese frosting for the inside and a chocolate ganache for the frosting. The recipe is below and I will let you know how it turns out. Wish me luck.

Seth

Cake
1 cup cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup whole milk
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
Powdered sugar

For cake: Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter 15x10x1-inch jelly-roll pan or cookie sheet with sides. Line bottom of pan with parchment paper; butter parchment. Whisk first 6 ingredients in medium bowl to blend.
Heat milk in medium saucepan over medium heat to 150°F. Using electric mixer, beat sugar and eggs in large bowl until fluffy, about 4 minutes. Beat in vanilla and grated orange peel. Beat in flour mixture until just blended. Gradually beat in warm milk. Pour batter into pan.
Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 10 minutes. Spread kitchen towel on work surface; cover with parchment. Sprinkle parchment lightly with powdered sugar. Run knife around edge of pan to loosen cake. Invert hot cake onto parchment. Peel parchment off top of cake. Starting at 1 long side and using towel as aid, gently roll up cake jelly-roll style. Cool.

Filling:
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
16 oz cream cheese
juice of one orange and 2 tablespoons zest
1 stick butter
4 teaspoons vanilla extract


For ganache
1/2 cup whipping cream
6 ounces bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 tablespoon Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur

Make ganache:
Bring cream to simmer in heavy medium saucepan. Remove from heat. Add chocolate, corn syrup and liqueur. Stir until mixture is smooth. Let ganache stand until cool and thick.
Whisk ganache just until soft peaks form (do not overmix). Spread ganache over roll. Using tines of fork, draw lines through ganache to represent tree bark. (Roll can be made 1 day ahead. Tent with foil and refrigerate.)

I also made merangue mushrooms to place around the outside: Wrap cookie sheet in foil and preheat to 250. beat 3-4 egg whites with a pinch of salt and a pinch of cream of tartar until foamy and soft peaks form. Add 1 cup sugar in 1 tablespoon additions (beat for at least 20 seconds between additions. After 1/2 cup of sugar then beat in dash of vanilla and keep adding sugar. After all sugar is in, beat for 8 minutes or so until you cannot taste the sugar crystals. Scoop into pastry bag with #7 tip and make 20 "stems" by slowly lifing bag as you squirt out merangues. Make caps by leaving tip just above cookie sheet and squeezing bag. Wet finger to push down peaks. sprinkle with cocoa and bake for over an hour at 250 until merangues are hard and peel off foil. Scrape out underside of "caps" slightly, fill with dark chocolate and then "glue" stem to cap and let harden upside-down.

Vicky had us over last night for beef tenderloin and Christmas tree decorating. The tenderlion, just roasted in the oven plain, was fantastic. We all marvelled at the fact that she got it at Hannaford! She had to ask the butcher for one, but he trimmed it out for her and tied it up and really picked out a nice one for her. Served with Bernaise sauce and asparagus, it was the perfect meal, I forgot how terrific a good beef tenderloin can be.

Enjoy,
Seth

Greg and I had a wonderful time on Saturday meeting up with a Maine Foodie blog reader and her husband at 3Tides. They are from Georgia and just started looking around the area for houses because they want to move here. I think its a great idea to come in the winter to see what its really all about up here. I suggest you come back in the dead of January or February to get the Full Flava of our fair state.
Anyway, we had a really great time meeting them and hope they enjoyed our little corner of the world. I do hope my waxing poetic about 3Tides on these pages held up to scrutiny from the South lands. Ohhh and thank you for the peach salsa and the honey (which I've had with my tea these past several mornings!)

Thanks again and do come back

Enjoy,
Seth

So, I thought I'd get really fancy this year and make everyone truffles for Christmas presents. I figured that everyone thought truffles would be really special. Found several recipes and melded them together to make my own special recipe and went out to gather the ingredients. I was told that the coop in Belfast had really good chocolate for baking and cooking, so I went there and found some German semi-sweet chocolate with a 66% cacao blend. Since I was there, I also found heavy organic whipping cream to go along with the really expensive chocolate. When all was gathered, I found myself writing a check for $40 + !!!! Ahh well, it is Christmas you know.
I must say that making the truffle mixture is really easy, actually forming the truffles is the hardest part. I made two batches and called it a day...no more truffles for this guy, especially since neither Greg, Tangie nor Vicky's eyes lit up in amazement over the taste.....they said they were delicious and pretty, but not a "spectacular!" or an "Oh my god these are amazing" among the bunch. Hmmmmmm.....Greg said his family loved the almond bark and the gingerbread the best out of all the Christmas eats I've sent...So I will make the frigging almond bark and send out both candy boxes to each of his siblings. I made enough truffles for 5 boxes..there are three different kinds: cocoa dusted, white chocolate dipped with dark chocolate drizzled on top, and bourbon dipped and rolled in almonds. The recipe follows:


11.5 oz good baking or eating chocolate at least 59% cacao
heavy whipping cream
various dips

heat 2/3 cup whipping cream to boil
chop chocolate and put in non-reactive bowl and pour cream over top

Stir clockwise from the center outwards with a whisk, but be careful not to beat the mixture. If it doesn'g get smooth, place bowl on warm burner and stir until smooth. Set aside mixture for 1 hour until chocolate is thick enough to hold a shape. Form truffles either by hand or with spoons and lay on parchment lined baking tray. Place in freezer for at least 30 mintues. Dip in various mixtures and chill.

Place in decorative foil cup and place in small candy boxes. They are beautiful to behold, but apparently my almond bark still takes the prize. Fa la la la la

Enjoy,
Seth

Greg and I decided to get out of the house last night and go down to 3Tides for dinner. It was pouring rain and so there was a quiet crowd gathered there. As I said before, there are some new menue specials there for the likes of us who don't eat seafood. A hot artichoke spinach dip and Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes caught my eye. Sarah recommended the meatballs and we also had a chicken quesadilla...they really are the best in town. While we were chatting around the bar, David brought our usuals over without our even ordering them...Have I said that I love 3Tides? We had appetizers with little Luna, who is 7 months old. She shared her organic fruit rice cakes with us, but I thought them rather sticky for my palette.
The meatballs and quesadilla arrived and Tom, the cook at 3Tides perfected getting the quesadillas extra crispy by baking them on a round pizza pan...this was the best one yet. Meatballs were good, and the mashed potatoes had a nice bit of ligonberry sauce on them, but the meatballs needed a bit more sauce to make them moist..all in all a great evening with old friends.
Today is Libby's birthday, so I have to make the dogs a liver cake for dinner...Perhaps I won't share that recipe with you!

Enjoy,
Seth

I just got the ultimate MaineFoodie type box from UPS today. Didn't know what was in it, so I opened it and found 15 fresh Persian limes wrapped in bubble wrap from my mom! They got to Florida to find all their fruit trees sagging with fresh Persian and Mexican limes and two kinds of oranges. Aside from making wicked margaritas, I'm taking suggestions for what to do with these juicy limes. (my sister got all the mexcan limes as she is a key-lime fanatic.) Personally, I'm thinking of great lime sorbet or perhaps a lime pie.

Enjoy,
Seth

Ken wrote me to say that he got his mom to make him the pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving. Its best straight on a fork from the fridge several days after baking. My comment back to you Ken would be to get your mom to try this recipe for your next holiday gathering: I made it the day before Thanksgiving and put it in the fridge overnight and the depth to the soup was incredible. Don't let the ingredients scare you, the taste is out of this world.

Spiced Pumpkin Soup

2 tablespoons butter

3/4 cup chopped carrot

3/4 cup chopped celery

3/4 cup ripe banana

1/2 onion chopped

1 clove garlic minced

1 bay leaf

1 whole clove (or ground is fine too)

5 cups chicken broth (I happened to have homemade turkey broth that I used)

2 cups canned pure pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling)

3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk

1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk

i teasoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground corriander

1/2 teasppon dried sage (or a few leaves of fresh sage...makes all the difference)

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teasppon yellow curry

sprinkling of toasted pecans before serving

Melt the butter and add the next seven ingredients and sautee until the vegetables are soft. Add 1 cup of broth after 10 minutes or so and then take off heat,remove bayleaf, cool slightly and add vegetable mix to blender. Blend until smooth and put back in pot. Add the rest of the stock and all the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil, stirring so as not to scald the milks. Let it slow boil on simmer for 10-20 minutes. If soup is smooth you are done, if not, let cool and reprocess until smooth. Best if made the day before, refridgerated and reheated.

Enjoy,

Seth

While I was in Boston last week, friends took me to Finale next to the Park Plaza Hotel. When they said we were going there, I thought it was some great Italian family place with cannolis on the menu! It was actually conceived to be the final act for the theater crowd and as such has a very light food menu and a very heavy dessert menu. So, for about 10 bucks one can get a chicken ceasar that is small, but really good, or a gourmet pizza that is quite large and delicious. Other items are paninni sandwiches, other salads, etc. What people die for here are the desserts, some of which can cost upwards of $30.00. We split a dessert for two between three of us for $16.00 which consisted of their famous molten chocolate dish, hard cocoa brownie on the outside and delectible runny chocolate on the inside with three scoops of ice cream and chocolate sauce. It was a pleasant meal, though the place was a bit noisy and somewhat of a scene with a lot of younger patrons. If you want a good, quiet, hearty meal, this isn't the place for you. But for a hick from the woods of the Maine Coast, it was a treat!

Food:A-/B+
Atmosphere: B

Enjoy,
Seth

Jeez, so much to write about, that I dunno where to start. Well, lets start with Cafe Miranda in Rockland since its been on my mind recently. We went there last Wednesday at a friend's invitation so that we could have a pre Thanksgiving feast together before all going our separate ways for the holiday.

First I have to say that its a loooooong drive to Rockland for dinner. But we've enjoyed Miranda before and were looking forward to our return. We all settled in and were given menus, which read like novellas and take about as long! I am always wary of restaurants that have such a profusion of things on the menu. I went the easy route, picking two appetizers, ceasar salad and asian dumplings. Greg had fried oysters and something called "the best thing on the menu", which when he ordered it, I thought, "thats a lot of cheek to order the best thing on the menu when you are being taken to dinner." Little did I know it was an actual item on the menu. Mary had chicken paprikash and Vicky had baked haddock. Quite possibly the best dish was Greg's fried oysters in an oyster sauce. They were passed around and everybody raved. The dish was small, having only 6 oysters, so it didn't last long. My ceasar was shot over with way too much lemon, so that was the only thing I tasted, which was too bad because it looked really fresh and had some nice parmasan shavings on it. Greg said his best thing on the menu was terrible, luke warm and tasted too much of uncooked, bottled minced garlic, which stayed with him alllllll night. My dumplings tasted like they were precooked and then warmed over as they were a bit hard, the sauce though was out of sight, very spicy and tongue numbing. Mary said her paprikash was just like her grandmother used to make in the old country (Frankly I didn't know they used paprika in Ireland) and Vicky was very pleased with her fish. The company made the dinner and the atmosphere was warm and cozy. All in all a good solid B-

Enjoy,
Seth

I called a client yesterday about an unrelated matter and the first thing she said to me was..."you gave me that almond bark recipe two years ago, is it the right one?" I told her it was (wink wink) and all was right with the world! Don't worry fuzzbe, I wasn't so devious two years ago and yes, you did get the right recipe (wink, wink, nod, nod).

So, am I a bad person? A neighbor asked me for my recipe for almond bark recently. Both she and her daughter pestered me for a month for it and I started thinking that they were going to make it and sell it along with the Christmas Wreaths that they make and sell around town.
Everyone tells me how good mine is and I've often thought of doing the whole cottage industry thing and making it for sale in my kitchen, so I don't want to give the recipe away to everyone.

So, I gave them a recipe for almond bark, but it wasn't the one I use! I have neighbor guilt now. I figure if they are good cooks, they'll figure out their own version and I should just leave it at that, for that is what I do.

who needs a deep fat fryer? I don't! I finally got the fried chicken breast recipe pretty well down pat last night.

What I did with boneless chicken breast was to pound them flat like scallopini then soak in egg and dredge in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper garlic and red pepper.

I heated a saute pan until hot and then added an inch of vegetable oil and got it hot but not smoking. I added two breaded breasts at a time and let them cook until golden...I tell you, there is nothing better then fresh hot juicy fried chicken, specially when there is no bone!

Thinking about Thanksgiving recipes this week. We are not hosting this year, so I really don't have to make too much. Perhaps the spiced pumpkin soup though.

Enjoy,
Seth

Been asked to post my butternut squash soup recipe, so here it is in one form. I've experimented with it and depending on whether I want something quick and healthy for lunches or something a bit richer and fancier for parties, I change the recipe accordingly.

For a quick healthy soup:

saute one leek or a medium yellow onion in about 2 tblspoons butter and a bit of olive oil
add minced garlic to taste (one or two cloves)
add one peeled and cubed butternut squash (use a vegetable peeler for best results or purchase the already peeled and packaged version at the grocery
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
two teaspoons ground sage or fresh sage from your garden
1 cubed apple( skin on for fibre)
let saute for about 10 minutes and then add chicken or vegetable broth to just cover the vegetables. Simmer until tender, about 20 minutes.

Take off heat and let cool before transferring to blender. Blend until smooth and return to pot
heat and serve.


If you want something a bit richer for parties, ditch the apple and add 1 cup carrots, cook and blend. After returning to pot, add 1 cup parmesan cheese heat, pour into bowls and swirl in a dollop of sour cream or creme fraiche. Top with fried sage leaves (dredge leaves in flour and fry in vegetable oil until crisp)

Enjoy,
Seth

We had one of our winter pot roasts last night. I got a great cut of pot roast meat at Graves in Camden and salt and peppered it, dredged it in flour, browned it in a pot with sauteed leeks and then added a 1/2 cup of port, 1/2 cup of bourbon, and about a cup of water to the pot and brought to a boil, adding minced garlic to the fray and then letting it simmer for four hours. Served with roasted cubed butternut squash that I put in a roasting pan with chicken broth and salt and pepper and roasted for a bout 45 minutes until tender. mmmmm


We then treated ourselves by going out to 3Tides for drinks with Vicky. David set down their new special menu which contains all sorts of great things to eat, including garlic mashed potatoes, pasta bean and herb soup, spicy hot crab and lobster dip, and lots of new pizzas and sandwiches. Sounds perfect for the long winter months.
We got talking to David about Vodkas and before we knew it, he had set up a Vodka tasting for us with two grain vodkas and three potato vodkas, including a new high end potato vodka, Cold River, that is distilled and bottled in Freeport, Maine.
Here are the results:

Potato Vodkas:
Chopin: a bit of biting aftertaste, somewhat sour to my palette, doesn't mix well with cranberry
Luksusowa: strong but smooth, perfect for sipping
Cold River: The smoothest of the potatoes, but has a hint of butterscotch and vanilla flavors at the end that I didn't find enjoyable. Mixes well with cranberry, but the expense makes it not a great choice as a mixing vodka.

Grain Vodkas:
Belvedere: Very smooth, my favorite after Luksusowa. Chilled and straight up, this is a winner
Grey Goose: Certainly, the strongest taste, not so smooth, clearly the loser of the bunch. Mixes very well though.

Thanks again to David and Sarah at 3Tides for a great evening. As I say, its so nice to walk into a bar or restaurant and know not only the owners, but a lot of the patrons as well.

Enjoy,
Seth

Hey everyone, this has been a very busy week for me, been to Boston twice and Portsmouth once on different auction ventures. Waste of time if you ask me. After all of that I bought a single stoneware jug for a client....hohum!

Needless to say, I haven't been out to eat or cooking too much. It is soup season, so I had the chance to make my butternut squash and apple soup last week. Bit of ground sage in it and I was good to go. Greg hates soup, but I'm sure you all know that by now if you read everything on this site. The squash soup recipe is on here somewhere.

Am off to vote today. Remember if you live in Maine and have the will to vote...vote no on 1.

Vote no on 1 and help end discrimination in Maine.

Last night we had a great evening with our punny friend Mary out at Seng Thai in East Belfast. The food delicious as always, the atmosphere is certain to foster comments from the peanut gallery what with the sparkley paintings on velvet and such. But the biggest enjoyment at Seng Thai is the presentation of the food. Thai Chicken arrives in a pineapple boat with carved carrot rose blossoms. The curry comes in a pretty covered blue and white dish and that makes the food taste that much better. We're still at hot level number 4, not daring to go to a five yet.

Afterwards, we stopped by our favorite watering hole to chat with our friends David and Sarah at 3Tides. There was a nice crowd, including little Luna's grandparents who were feeding her cereal when we got there. A nice night out on the town to recharge our batteries.

Tonight we are making pot stickers and taking them over to Vicky's house where we will imbibe lots of steamed stickers and carve our pumpkins. I also need to make a few loads of almond bark for the hospital halloween party as well as for the 6 tricksters we get.

Tune in tomorrow foodie fans and you'll hear about making stickers.

Thanks for keeping the ad clicking alive. We are a long way from a group ice cream run, but we'll get there.

Enjoy,
Seth

For those of you who wanted to learn more about how the Haute for Hospice show went, click on the link for coverage of the event. The picture of the cute guy at the end is Greg...he thinks most of you probably envision him the size of a beach ball what with all the stuff I feed him!

http://belfast.villagesoup.com/Community/story.cfm?storyID=62653

Enjoy,
Seth

I'm making dog cookies again today using leftover pork, an apple, oatmeal and carrots, binding with an egg. I realized how desperately I need to go restock the kitchen as I have no garlic or parsley to add to the mix.

Hope they like it...smells pretty good to me.

Enjoy,
Seth

Keep on clicking up there, only make $3.90 so far this month.

So, I read in the paper today that the Lookout Pub in Belfast is reopening with two new owners, young women in their early 20s, one of whom bartended at the old place. Good for them! They plan to be a family oriented restaurant during the day, serving lunch and dinner and then a bar at night after 9pm. The new name will be the Lookout Bar and Grille (is that grill or grilly?). Gone will be the martini bar upstairs and the beergarden outside, which is great news as that was probably a big money loser for the old Lookout. I never understood why it was called the lookout though, since all the look out on is the back of 3Tides restaurant...oh sorry, 3Tides isn't a restaurant, its a bar with food.
So I say. good luck to the new and improved Lookout bar and grille. We'll be in soon to take it on a "taste drive". Oh, my slides are splitting from that one.

Enjoy,
Seth

Wet winter weather is here! I can't believe I can see the islands and the bay already now that the leaves have not only fallen off the trees, but seemingly run screaming from their branches to the ground. Anyway, its time for a bit of tea in the afternoons in front of the fire and what better to accompany a bit of constant comment tea than this delicous Lemon Rosemary Tea cake. Its a bit like pound cake with a distinct rosemary taste. I was down visiting my aunt several weeks ago and she served this for dessert after dinner with a plum sauce...its also good warm or even toasted in the oven. I have someone coming to see a painting next week and I might just make a loaf of this to put them in a good enough mood to buy it :-)
Thanks AJ!

Lemon Rosemary Tea Cake
(with olive oil and buttermilk)


4 cups flour
1 T baking powder
½ t salt
4 t lemon zest
4 t dried minced rosemary (more if fresh) 2/3 cup light olive oil
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 ½ cups lowfat buttermilk


Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Oil 2 9x5” loaf pans, or equivalent.
Thoroughly combine flour, baking powder, lemon zest, rosemary and salt. In a large bowl or electric mixer, beat oil and sugar until well blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, until mixture is pale yellow.
Add 1/3 flour mixture to eggs, then half of buttermilk, stirring to blend. Add remaining buttermilk, stirring, then 1/3 more flour mixture, then stir in final 1/3 . Spread in pans and bake until golden, and sides of cake pull away from edge of pan (50-55 min?)

Glaze
1 1/2 cups sifted confectioners sugar 4-6 T fresh lemon juice

Stir glaze until smooth and spread on warm loaves. After cooling, turn out of pan. Alternatively, remove loaves and cool before spreading icing on all sides. You may need more glaze.

Enjoy,
Seth

Between repainting the bathroom yesterday and working the phone lines with clients, I had to squeeze in a pumpkin cheesecake for potluck tonight. The bathroom is still a mess and I gave up after one wall. Its a whole new color scheme to cover up the horrible mistake we made with the color last time. We wanted something bright and cheery because the bathroom was so dark....then we cut the trees down in the front of the house and low and behold, we had sun...and a tacky paint job! We are going a bit more conservative this time with a wall color called Shiloh which is a soft pebble gray with bright white trim and a sage green floor. Speaking of sage, probably you didn't log on to hear about my color choices for the bathroom. What follows is the recipe for Pumpkin Cheesecake. What I did here was combine my favorite NY cheesecake recipe with one for Pumpkin, the results are a light and tasty dessert that gets raves.

Preheat a slow oven at 325
excessively butter a 9-10" round springform pan
crumble 2-3 cups of ginger snaps (I ground them in my little food processor)
line the bottom of the pan with the crumbs and press them into the sides of the pan for the crust (I only press them about 1/2 way up the sides of the pan so that there is a nice contrast to the color of the pumpkin cake and the crumbs when you take out of pan)

In a large bowl combine
1 lb cream cheese and 1 lb ricotta (my secret cheese for cheesecakes) softened and using a spook or a mixer, combine until light and fluffy
add:
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon each of ground cloves and nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger or allspice
pinch of salt

Then add 6 eggs, room temperature, one at a time until mixed thoroughly

Fold in 1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree
1 lb sour cream

Pour into springform pan. I find that I usually have more batter left over and luckily I have a tiny spring form pan so I can make a little one for Greg. I've learned to do this because he'll always bug me to have a little piece just for him. I'll be doing things around the house and I'll hear this voice behind me "can I have a piece of cake?" "why can't we just take a cheese log to potluck and leave this here for me?" Its cute and makes me laugh, but now I can say, I made one just for you!

Anyway place in the center rack in the center of the oven and bake for one hour. Without opening the door, turn oven off and leave cheesecake in oven to dry for 2 hours. take out and cool completely, (top may crack, which is fine) and chill overnight.

You can serve it plain or with a topping such as fresh cranberry sauce or glaceed pecans, candied orange peels or sprinkle with toasted pumpkin seeds.

Enjoy,
Seth

Alright, the pressure to post more is getting to me!!!! Found this cake recipe on Epicurious and it sounded decadent and impressive enough to serve to Greg's mom for her birthday this year. The caramel-milk chocolate frosting is to die for. Everyone was moaning over it! Better the second day, so you might want to make it a day ahead. There is a ton of frosting to use and it gets nice and hard when the cake is chilled.

Chocolate cake with milk chocolate-caramel frosting.


Cake
Nonstick vegetable oil spray
2 cups sifted cake flour (sifted, then measured)
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups (packed) golden brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract ( I was out and used bourbon)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk
1/2 cup lukewarm water

Frosting
24 ounces good milk chocolate (Dove or imported), finely chopped
3 ounces bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
2 1/4 cups whipping cream

For cake: Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray two 9-inch-diameter cake pans with 1 1/2-inch-high sides with nonstick spray. Line bottom of pans with parchment paper. Sift Flour and next four ingredients together in bowl. Using electric mixer or by hand, beat brown sugar and butter in large bowl until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla or bourbon. Beat in dry ingredients in 3 additions alternately with buttermilk in 2 additions. Beat in 1/2 cup lukewarm water.

Divide batter among prepared pans (about 2 1/3 cups for each). Smooth tops. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center of cakes comes out clean, about 22 minutes. Cool completely in pans on racks. Invert cakes onto parchment (cakes are delicate). Peel off parchment on bottom.

For frosting: Combine milk chocolate and bittersweet chocolate in large bowl. Stir sugar and 1/2 cup water in medium saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Boil without stirring until syrup is deep amber color, occasionally brushing down sides of pan with wet pastry brush and swirling pan, about 10 minutes. Carefully and slowly add whipping cream (mixture will bubble vigorously). Stir over low heat until any hard caramel bits dissolve and mixture is smooth. Pour caramel over chocolate; let stand 1 minute to allow chocolate to soften, then whisk until chocolate is melted and smooth. Chill chocolate-caramel frosting until completely cool, about 2 hours. (or freeze bowl if you are pressed for time) Let stand 1 hour at room temperature before continuing (or microwave a bit to melt)

Using electric mixer, beat frosting just until color resembles milk chocolate and frosting is easily spreadable, about 1 minute (do not overbeat or frosting will become stiff and grainy). If necessary to correct graininess, set bowl with frosting over saucepan of simmering water for 10-second intervals, whisking just until frosting is smooth and spreadable.
Place 1 cake layer on platter, flat side up. Spread 1 cup frosting evenly over top. Top with second cake layer, flat side up, pressing slightly to adhere. Spread 1 cup frosting over top. Spread remaining frosting over top and sides of cake, swirling decoratively.


Enjoy,
Seth

I've been ordered by Greg to post here tonight. Currently, Greg is in the kitchen sopping up the leftover sauce I made for my chicken fried pork chops with a german pumpernickle cocktail bread that I found at Renys.

I got three thumbs up for dinner tonight, one from Greg and one each from Vicky and Mary who both happened to stop by around 5:30 to see "what was up." What was up was two hungry females sniffing around for a dinner invite!

Anyway, my skeleton for dinner was a load of boneless pork chops, some swiss chard that I need to use, and an acorn squash. I halved the squash scooped out the seeds and placed both halves flesh side up in a roasting pan with about 2 inches of water in the bottom. I placed a bit of butter and salt and pepper in each half and roasted them at 350 for an hour.

I decided to chicken fry the pork, so I trimmed the chops, beat the crap out of them with a wooden mallet to flatten them, dredged them in a mixture of flour, ground sage, cayanne, salt and pepper and then added them to a skillet with hot hot vegetable oil (almost to smoking hot) and fried on each side for about 3 minutes a side.

While that was going on, I sauteed chopped leeks with garlic and olive oil and then added the swiss chard and let it wilt down and "marinate " on low until time to eat.

After the pork was done, I removed the chops, drained off the oil, and then scraped the scrapings off the bottom the pan, added butter and about 1/2 the remaining dredge flour with spices to make a rue. I had some nice strong homemade chicken stock in the fridge that I added to make a sauce, then placed the pork back in the sauce and made sure they were covered.

The pork was very juicy and had a great spice to it. Greg is still in the kitchen searching for leftovers.

Even if you don't try the pork, try the chard, it is one of my favorite easy vegetables and everyone will be really impressed.

Enjoy,
Seth

So this morning was clean the fridge morning. We've had so many people here over the last week that there was a ton of stuff just sitting in there waiting to be made into something.....I thought, "time to make dog cookies" I took left over roast beast, some old celery, and some left over broccoli spears and ground them up in the cuisineart. Then had some left over lobster stock to temp the puppies, so I threw that in. Add lots of oatmeal, a bit of peanut butter and an egg and mix well. Drop onto cookie sheet like peanut butter cookies and flatten with a fork for best results. I baked at 300 for a while and then dropped it to 200 to dry the cookies out and now the pups are enjoying a rather lovely rich, natural dog treat. They are doing the happy dance in front of the kitchen as I type.

Enjoy,
Seth

I came home from being out on the road for several days to find Greg and his parents and our house guests sitting down to a big lobster dinner. When they were finished, I put the shells in water and set the water to boil with a few bay leaves, some garlic, and some celery salt. I boiled it for about an hour and then reduced the liquid somewhat.

Found a recipe for lobster bisque where I took the shells out of the water, crushed them up and sauteed them in oil, adding onions, and a 1/2 cup of coniac and sauteeing until brown. T hen adding a head of garlic, a few carrots, celery, one sliced up tomato, tarragon, thyme, and 3 cups of the lobster water...(I then reduced the lobster water in the other pot by about 2/3rds and added this to the pot as well.) I simmered the whole for over an hour and then strained and set back onto boil while whisking in a can of tomato paste to thicken it. I took it off the stove to cool and then put it in the fridge for the day to meld the flavors. Right before serving I added cream and dissolved corn starch and set to slow boil again to get the flavors going. It got rave reviews, though I don't know how it tastes personally. I served it from Greg's mother's birthday dinner along with roast chicken, broccoli, and chocolate cake with milk chocolate caramel frosting.

Enjoy,
Seth

So, the Hospice show went really well. I made the pork tenderloin sandwiches by roasting these mammoth tenderloins with rosemary and garlic and then slicing them very thin, placing the slices on a platter and then pouring the juices overtop and refrigerating the platter until we were ready to assemble the sandwiches. The night before, I had wisked garlic and lemon juice together with mayo and then combined that with a homemade pesto to create a wonderfully fragrant, light pesto aioli sauce.

Needless to say, there were no sandwiches left after the party.

So my whole plan for food for the Haute for Hospice event went out the window yesterday when I walked into Sam's Club in Bangor. Vicky has a Sam's membership and since I said that I would buy the soft drinks and water for the show, plus the fact that Greg's parents and friends are coming for a whole week, I thought I would stock up. I forget that Sam's has great meat and fantastic prices. Where else will you find 90% lean hamburger for $1.96 a pound...of course you have to buy 9 pounds of it! So, Sam's was running a special on pork tenderloin in 7 pound roasts. I decided to get two, grill them, and then make pork tenderloin sandwiches with a garlic pesto mayonaise for the show. I got 100 little rolls so I can make 100 little sandwiches. I also got cheese and fruit and crackers as an emergency side hors d'ourevre just in case. More food will be provided by area restaurants, but in case one cancels last minute, I want to have a backup. Its a control issue!

Enjoy,
Seth

Greg came home from the grocery store the other day proudly toting a 6 pound pot roast that he wanted me to cook for sandwiches. I took one look at it and said to myself, "thats a great piece of roast beef.....no pot roasting for this baby!" Not being a red meat cooker, I googled what to do with a top round roast. I decided to go with the Italian beef roast, which made the house smell great all evening.
Though James Beard told me not to put the roast in a pan without a rack, and NEVER add liquid to the pan for fear of steaming the meat...I threw caution to the wind and decided to go my own way.
I took the roast and slathered it in olive oil, cut slits in the top and shoved in fresh garlic, and then peppered the hell out of it with both black and red pepper. Added some garlic powder and then rolled the whole thing in oregano. I put the beast back in the roasting pan and then added 1/2 a cup of red wine and 2 cups of water, with about 1/2 a cup of chopped onion. It took approximately 3 hours to cook at 325. When done save the juice and put aside
I let the beast set and then shoved it in the fridge, but not before cutting off a few tasters for the dogs and me. I'm supposed to slice it thin and then soak the slices in the juice and reheat in the oven....its pretty tender, I made a sandwich out of it with cheese and it was excellent.

I'm going to have a taste test today and see if this might be appropriate to make into sandwiches for the fashion show this weekend. Ever been to a party and they have those tiny roast beef sandwiches? I love that! hmmmmmm...thats an idea.

Enjoy,
Seth

We drove over to Deer Isle yesterday to deliver a blanket for a client. The drive was stupendous and the leaves over that way are turning a bit faster than they are here on the mid-coast. We had to find the Goose Cove Lodge (thank you reader for setting me straight on the name), which was a very cool place, down a long dirt road at the end of the earth it seemed. The view was spectacular from what I could see of it. What a place with cabins nestled in the woods and a small main lodge. Anyway, there was a wedding there yesterday and we just delivered the blanket for the bride and groom and took off. (This from a reader who shares all sorts of restaurant tidbits and recipes with me: [Its a ] great place with a decent chef.)

We decided to stop in Blue Hill for lunch and went into the first place we found, The Blue Moose. Whether it was late or just a slow day out of season, we were one of only two tables in the place. It was pretty sterile and generic, with art for sale on the walls and pine tables and chairs. The menu looked good and I chose the Chicken salad with raisins and toasted pine nuts on rye. Greg had something called the gobbler which was essentially turkey, cheese, and lettuce and tomato wrapped in a tortilla with guac and sour cream. Typical sandwich place. Service was overly attentive and the ginger smooshy (as opposed to ginger snaps) cookies we got for the car were great.

Atmosphere was a definite C
Service was an A
Food was a B

Enjoy,
Seth

Its comfort food season again! For me that means using heartier vegetables with dinner. Last night we had chicken breast, floured, seasoned and browned in butter and olive oil and then simmered in lemon juice until tender and juicy along with fresh butternut squash and spinach. For the squash, I took a vegetable peeler and removed the skin, chucked the whole squash on a plate in the microwave for about 2 minutes to soften and then cut, deseeded and cubed it. The whole went into a pot with about 1/4 cup water, olive oil, a tablespoon butter, and salt, pepper, ground sage, garlic, and just the tiniest amount of brown sugar. I then simmered for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally until tender. The result was a very flavorful, hearty and healthy vegetable alternative. Mmmm mmm good.

Enjoy,
Seth

I finally had lunch at Chase's Daily in Belfast yesterday. I have always resisted for some reason. I'm not a big fan of trendy organic food places that look like they should be in Easthampton rather than in Belfast, Maine. But, friends of my parents dropped by and I had to take them somewhere, so I figured we should go there. I watched with bemusement as this ultra conservative guy perused a menu that included black beans and rice, hummus sandwiches, and omlets with tofu. Both Ed and his very cool wife, Milly, had the tomato and mozzerella sandwich. I had the black beans and rice with a side quesadilla, cause followers of this stream of food nonsense know that I like quesadillas. Ed and Milly loved their sandwiches, commenting that the baguettes were extremely fresh and good and the tomatos were perfect. I thought the beans and rice was great, if a bit too heavy on the cilantro. But it came with grated cheese, tomatos and a side of salsa. The quesadilla on the other hand was awful. I think the tortillas were microwaved and they used goat cheese for the filling...and while thats fine for some people...gimme a cheese with some heft and a bit of spice and make sure the quesadilla is extra crispy or take it away!
Anyway.....it was nice to know every other person who walked in the door and the space is pleasing and has some great atmosphere and people watching. Overall, I'd give the food a B+/A- (didn't you hate getting this grade is school...looking back now, it was such a control issue thing...if the teacher had liked you better, you would've gotten the darn A- free and clear) and the atmospehere an A. Great service too.

Enjoy,
Seth

my vintage bottle of French vinegar sold for over $200 on Ebay. Someone is going to be kinda mad if they ever open this one. BUT, Ebay will only allow us sellers to auction the collectable bottles and their labels rather than the wine itself as auctioning wine is against their policies. And, quite frankly, I started the auction at $9.99 with no reserve so its not like I ever though the wine would get up to that price! (Can you tell I am struggling with seller's guilt? Not so much that it stopped me from offering the buyer the second bottle I have for the same price)

:-)
Seth

I've made $10.00 from these ads at the top of the page..thanks

So our neighbor's son wedding was great. It was in their backyard under a tent behind their 1797 Federal house with a fantastic view of the Bay. It was catered by a local caterer in Belfast, Trillium. They had a full bar and served apple cider martinis which were very tasty. The passed hors d'oeurves were vegetarian sushi which were passable and crab and avacado quesadillas, which looked wonderful, but yours truly didn't have any, and Greg was having too much fun to notice. There was also a cheese and fruit bar and an oyster bar...very swanky.

Dinner was a buffet with lamb kabobs and scallop kabobs. The lamb was really tender and lean though a bit cold. Greg said the scallops were lukewarm and a bit underdone. There were also big fresh orange and red tomato slices with purple basil which were great and colorful and the most memorable part of the dinner. We also had salad and rice pilaf.

The cake was gorgeous, five layers of square marble cake with a super smooth icing and small wine grapes and currants spilling over the sides, but the icing tasted too much like butter and the cake itself was hard...I guess you need that to make something so pretty. I always want my cakes to be moist, so they are always lopsided!

Anyway, we had a fabulous time. Food was secondary (can you believe I said that?) or even third on the list after the '80s cover band to which everyone danced

Enjoy,
Seth

My cousin Grace is an amazing entertainer. Everytime the ole family gets together, someone has the hutzpah to get Grace to have the party. I wish she would say no sometimes because she spends hours handmaking everything...not that I mind, but I can think of a thousand better things to do with my time than baking and cooking for my cousins! Seriously, if I lived where the gatherings tend to be, I would just put out a bottle of vodka and some cheese and get out of the way, lest I be trampled by the booze hounds in the clan (that would pretty much be my immediate family)

Anyway, dear Grace sent me the following recipe to try for the Haute for Hospice show cocktail party. Its what everyone wants in a dessert, butter, sugar and some chocolate.

12 whole(double) graham crackers
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 1/2 c. chopped pecans

Place crackers in jelly-roll pan so that bottom is completely covered.

Melt butter and sugar together, bring to a boil and cook for 2 minutes exactly. Pour syrup over crackers, sprinkle with nuts.

Bake at 350 for 8 minutes. Cool only slightly before cutting.

Makes about 48
Note: I've experimented with finely grated chocolate added to syrup on crackers before nuts; delicious too.


I made peanut butter cookies last night after Greg's incredible grilled pork suppah. They are extremely easy and taste great:

1 cup natural peanut butter (super chunky)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar or splenda
1 tblspoon butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon flour

Combine ingredients, mixing after each addition and then form into balls and place on cookie sheet. Flatten with tines of a fork and place in preheated (I made the mistake of putting a small batch into a preheating oven and the bottoms burned) 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.
Let cool on pan and then transfer to mouth.

Enjoy,
Seth

oh, by the way, my bottle of vinegar....I mean, uhh, Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1965, is up to $112.50 on Ebay...shhhhhh

:-)

Seth

Took the day off today to hang out with the hippies and the mules at the Common Ground Fair. We met my sister Ann there and had a great time going through all the craft booths and watching the mules and the work horses. Lunch on the fly was cheese and sausage calzone for me, fried clams for Greg (suprise suprise) and a sausage on a stick for Ann. She was pretty popular at the fair, being a green soul herself, seemed like everyone knew her. We went apple tasting and learned all about the different flavors apples take on depending on when you harvest them. That was kind of cool.

Got back to house guests we don't know who are staying with us during a neighbor's wedding weekend. They went out on the town with the wedding party while we are staying in. Greg is grilling a pork loin which he split in two and stuffed with fresh rosemary and garlic, tied up and threw on his grill. We still pretend its summer up here, so I cut up some garden fresh zucchini into strips and tossed it with salt, pepper, garlic, and butter then wrapped it in foil for the grill. Damn thats good. We are hunkering down for the second half of Empire Falls, the movie, which so far is pretty close to the book. Rich Russo lives down the street and taught at Colby when I was there....so thats my brush with fame for the day.

Come back on Sunday when I'll tell ya about the food from the wedding.

Enjoy,
Seth

so, I am now getting hit with at least a spam comment a day. I've had to institute a word verification command so that only humans can leave comments. Sorry about this folks. Leave it to a few bots to ruin it for the rest of us.

Seth

Greg and I went to dinner down at 3Tides last night so that we could get our David/Sarah/Luna fix for the week. It was a perfect evening, we got there early so that we would beat the rush and have time to chat with David and Sarah, which is always a great time.

Greg and I talked about the "haute for hospice" show and he thought I should make the sweets for the cocktail party before. There will be enough other food from area restaurants, but nobody is appealing to the sweet teeth in the crowd. I'll prolly make lemon squares with shortbread crust, toffee bars, and these brown sugar and graham cracker cookies that my cousin made the other weekend that were out of this world......mmmm can't wait for that sugar high.

Seth :-)

I have a bottle of 1965 Chateau Lafite Rothschild up for sale on Ebay this week. My parents purchased a case of it in Bermuda in the 60s and the stuff is awful! I can't even cook with it cause it tastes so bad. We've tried to decant bottles over the years for special occasions and there is just no drinking it. We even let it "breathe" overnight and all it is still good for is filling water ballons. My parents think its because the sail back from Bermuda was so hairy that the wine kept moving with every movement of the boat. I think it was just a bad year, and apparently the wine collectors on Ebay know that too, since it hasn't gotten above $9.99 yet. Other bottles of vintage Chateau Lafite are selling for hundreds....leave it to my parents to buy the worst vintage from that winery in decades!

Enjoy,
Seth

only 7 cents today.....sigh

Big score today at Marden's in Waterville. I hopped in the car with my Harry Potter book on disc...all 36 disks worth and headed off to Gardiner to an auction preview. Decided after looking at a lot of junk to head to Augusta and see if I could find some food for Sebastian to help his allergies. He sits around all day and licks his paws and shakes his head 'cause his ears are itchy. We switched the dogs' food to Wellness brand, which is wheat free, but it still makes him itchy. I ended up with potato and duck kibble from Nature's Balance which is hawked by Dick Van Patten of "Eight is Enough" fame. Anyway, since Waterville is only about 24 miles further, I wanted to check out the new Mardens and had to go up to Colby for some museum business.
When I got to Marden's they still had Nature's Balance for 1/2 price, so I bought about 6 months worth for the pups. Sebastian seems to be less itchy when he eats it. Normally, a 30 lb bag costs $40.00! These were $19. I did my happy bargain dance and loaded up eight of the bags in my cart as people stared with bemused expressions.

By now you are wondering what this has to do with PEOPLE food, aren't you? Well, after that I went up to the museum and ended up having lunch with some of my friends who work there. They took me to the coffee shack II on Kennedy Memorial Drive, right past the Black Stove Shop. Its a groovy small deli where you can order sandwiches, or burgers and dogs, or get donuts and coffee. Super nice people and good food. I ordered a chicken salad on marble rye (there were three choices of chicken salad and I had the regular as opposed to the cranberry walnut or some other kind) I was asked if I wanted it pressed, which means grilled in a sandwich press...a delighful way to toast the bread. My friends each had a reuben and a pressed cheese sandwich which they liked very much. For dessert we split a key lime and white chocolate chip cookie...a great way to end a fast lunch.

Everything was very nice....B+ all around.

Enjoy,
Seth

I'm off to Gardiner to an auction preview today to look at a chest of drawers for a client in Chicago. I told you the other day that if I went south on Rte 1, I liked to stop at Megunticook market....if I go out Rte 3 from Belfast to Augusta, I love to stop at the Mobil station in Belfast across from Dairy Queen to get a muffin for breakfast. Its hard to belive, but I think the Mobil station has the best muffins in town, and I just love a great muffin. Most places use almond extract to make their muffins, and this is one of the biggest mistakes one can make. Almonds and blueberries just don't mix very well. The almond extract gets in the way of any fruit taste the muffin might actually have.

Remember that episode on Seinfeld about muffin tops? I completely agree....the rest of the muffin is just filler, but the muffin top is pure gold!

Enjoy,
Seth

psych, you guys made me a buck eighty-five yesterday! Another two months of this and Google sends me a check for $100.00. I'll take you all out for ice cream---though by then it will almost be December and the ice cream places will be closed. Hmmmm.....I'll make holiday candy then and send it out as a nice thank you to all my loyal foodie readers.

Thanks.

Enjoy,
Seth

So, I caved....mea culpa, mea culpa....you may have noticed the google ad bar at the top of the Maine Foodie page here. It essentially crawls through my posts and adds relavent ads to the bar in hopes that readers will click and click and click some more. There are actually some very interesting recipes and other foodie related ads...I tell you this because when you click on one of the four ads up there and then click on any of the content from that ad, I get a tiny amount of cash...the more you click, the fuller my piggy bank becomes.
For instance, someone clicked on the content yesterday and I received 7 cents. wooo hooooo
Now, if all 49 people who visited the site yesterday clicked on, I could potentially realize...hmmm, lemme get the calculator out....$3.43 cents. not too shabby for the foodster here...In a few years I could have enough cash to dine at the Edge in Lincolnville but not drink!

So click away up there..do it for the foodster.

P. S. I am still trying to come up with something yummy and cold, or at least room temp to serve to the 200 partygoers for the "Haute for Hospice" show. Perhaps just a ham.....mmmmm.

Enjoy,
Seth

Sometimes when I'm travelling south from Northport during the day, I time my trip so that I can stop at Megunticook Market in Camden. I love taking the back way from here to Rte 90 and winding my way around Megunticook Lake on Route 52.
The market makes great fresh sandwiches and they have a wonderful salt foccacia that is perfect with roast beef and chedder. If I happen to pass by during breakfast, the market also has a great bakery in the front. Its one of my favorite secret places to go when traveling around on my own.....come on, you all have them too, right?

Enjoy,
Seth

Sorry to leave you all hanging about the Lobster Vichyssoise saga, but I had to go down to NY to help my parents move out of their house.

So, when last we heard, the completed recipe was ready for the fridge and needed an overnight to chill. The next day, I fed it to Greg and our neighbor who stopped for dinner and the overwhelming response was that it was too salty and the taste of curry was too much. That said to me that the stock was much too strong and needed diluting, so the next day I made a full batch of potato leek soup and combined it with the already cold vichyssoise. Greg was going out to play mah jong with the girls, so I made him take it along and reviews were great. Everyone thought it was wonderful. But, after all that I don't think I'm going to make it for the Hospice benefit for several reasons: 1. I can't taste it myself 2. Its cold 3. its not easy to make 4. its not an easy "finger food" to pass. Back to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!

Enjoy,
Seth

I'm a pizza snob. There, I said it. I grew up with New York pizza: thin crust that was perfectly chewy and soft, just the perfect amount of sauce and great cheese. We folded the big slices to eat them. My mom used to pick me up from school on Fridays (we had 1/2 days on Fridays) and we'd go to Marios for slices. Those were the days. I lived in Chicago for 10 years and hated the pizza there. The thin crust was the best in Chicago and when you would get a pizza delivered, it would be a round pizza cut into squares...go figure!
When we moved to Maine, I didn't think about the pizza....visions of insulation and cords of wood dominated my thoughts instead. But when we first decided to go for pizza there was nowhere to go! I mean there is Pizza hut, but, yuck! Then there is Alexia's on Main Street in Belfast. I never thought a place like that could go downhill until I went there before going to the movies the other night. What a dump this place has turned out to be. At 6pm on a Friday night, it was dirty; pretty filthy actually. All I wanted was a slice of cheese and what they had available looked like it was cooked hours before and shoved into that plexiglass display case. I mean, this pizza was old! I think also that the kitchen in restaurants that are dirty should never be seen, yet at Alexia's, the kitchen is right there and you can just tell that the people running the place were not really into cleanliness. So, thats all I have to say about Alexia's. The rating system here is easy: F F F F across the board.

Enjoy,
Seth

so, whodda thought, the lobster stock made with the bodies and water with a bit o' wine was "lobsterier" to coin a Gregism than the stock I put all the fancy stuff into....so I combined them and reduced. seven lobsters gave me about 1 quart of stock! The way I'm going, how many lobsters am I going to need to feed 200 people a shot of soup? Oh David!!!!!! :-)

Anyway, Greg was so happy to be bothered by me wanting a taster. We went through all the phases. I got a mite pissy when he dunked his beer bread into the boiling stock and left a floater!

After the stock was reduced I melted a quarter stick of butter and added some olive oil into a pot and shoved in one leek, and two honkin large Yukon Gold taters, cut up. The I decided to separate that mixture so I could experiment and to one I added some curry powder and left the other plain, save for some fresh nutmeg, sea salt and ground pepper. I sauteed the mixtures for a while and then slowly added stock to both. When the taters were tender, I blendered them and got a smooth, thick mixture...not what I want to try and pour into two hundred shot glasses.

To stem the flowability problem, I addded the rest of the stock...yikes thats a lot of stock for two potatoes. Greg tasted both and pronounced the curry infused soup the best, "hands-down" I then combined the two, added a bit more curry and stirred over low heat until heated through.

When I hurried out to the road with a sample for a passing neighbor, her comment was "its different...tastes like a lobster tamale with curry....not my cup of tea" Well, shoot! we'll see what becomes of it tomorrow after its had time to chill and meld.

Perhaps I'll just make little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead

Humph!
Seth

Thanks to David from 3Tides, I have seven good sized lobster bodies cut into small pieces simmering on the stove right now in a brew that makes Greg's head swoon and my stomach do flip flops! I'm making lobster stock....something I will never taste as I am allergic to shell fish. The smell makes me queezy, but Greg said it was pure heaven, so I'll take his word for it.

David told me that most he has checked for making stock do so without using the head sack of the lobster...some of the sites I checked with also say to discard the head and innards before beginning, so I played it safe and snipped off the legs and the little sand digger claws and added those to the claws and the tails in a big pot with all sorts of other good junk and it has to simmer for at least an hour. I put the bodies in another pot and .....are you ready for this?.....tell me how spoiled my dogs are......I'm making them a bisque for dinner out of the bodies!

So, into the lobster stock pot goes:

1 stick butter
3/4 yellow onion chopped
2 medium leeks
3 stalks celery
3 cloves garlic
3 types of fresh herbs: sage, thyme, and lemon balm
sea salt and pepper to taste
all get sauteed until lightly brown
add:
3 cups vegetable stock
the cut up lobster with drippings from shells
enough white wine and water to cover shells (i used almost about 3/4 bottle of wine, but then again, I'm a lush)
also added a bit of tomato sauce I had left over from lunch (optional)

So thats what simmering so far.
I've decided to try making curried potato leek soup with the stock to see how that is first and then go experimenting from there.

I'll let you know how it ends.
Thank you David!

Enjoy,
Seth

Greg is organizing a fashion show to benefit the local Hospice Volunteer organization. HE has enlisted the help of some local restaurants to provide nibbles for the cocktail party before the show. He asked me to make something if I want and I've thought about concocting a cold lobster vichyssoise and serving it in small shot glasses. I have to come up with a recipe, so I should experiment soon. I will keep my faithful fans (you know who you are) posted on the experimentation. My main concern is whether to make it chuncky or smooth.....any thoughts to that? I'd appreciate some comments.

Well, it happened again....Greg and I ended up driving around aimlessly, trying to figure out where to go have a cheap and cheerful meal at about 7:30 last night. We decided to try Oriental Plaza, the Chinese restaurant in East Belfast. We used to go to Oriental Plaza when it was located in the Main Street Market shopping center in Belfast. When walking in there, one could be transported to any Chinese restaurant around the country. It was surreal, because the interior decor was almost identical to the Chinese place we used to frequent in Chicago. NOW. the Plaza is located in the old Blueberry Bay restaurant/diner on Route 1. The seating area is huge and you still think that you are in a IHOP style restaurant save for the black Chinese coromandel panels on the walls. The booths and lighting fixtures are still blue and its a pretty funny experience.

Greg is standing here telling me to put in the review that the bathrooms are sticky and there is no way to get out of the bathroom without turning the handle on the door, so wear long sleeves. In my own terms, its the type of bathroom that makes you flush the toilet with your foot.

So onto the food. It was plentiful, thats for sure. We had an order of Orange beef and hot chicken curry. The amount of food that arrived would have fed four to five people, so the value was there. The curry they used tasted old and generic. It was certainly not "hot," the way I ordered it. The orange beef was really not very flavorful, but the beef was tender and tasted good. Vegetables were fresh, but as I say, the taste is not as good as Seng Thai down the street.
On a Saturday night at 7:30, there were only three tables of diners, which doesn't bode well for the place. I think most people in the know would rather go to Seng Thai, and thats where we will be headed in the future if we want Chicken curry again.

Food: C-
Service: D
Atmosphere: D
Cleanliness: F

Enjoy,
Seth

I have a new way to do a roast chicken that makes it wonderfully tender and juicy, and use the herbs in my garden to a wonderful effect.
As you've heard me before, we love little chicky night in our house because it means we can have curried chicken salad the next day for lunch and then have chicken soup sometime later in the week.

Anyway, I thoroughly wash and dry the chicken and then stuff the inside with fresh sage and rosemary...not really stuff, but put a big bunch in there. Then I drizzle olive oil all over the top and liberally sprinkle sea salt and pepper all over it, and put the while thing in a roasting pan with high sides and roast for approximately 2 hours on 350. The salt and the herbs really flavor the chicken so well and it comes out all tender and amazing. yummm

A friend gave me a bunch of blackberries the other day so I made a lemon blackberry tart to go with the chicken....I decided to use Splenda as the sweetener and it turned out ok, but there really is nothing like good ole sugar!

Enjoy,
Seth

Hey all, been on the road a lot lately. Just back from Chicago where I had lunch with a client at a hip downtown restaurant called NAHA. Its a huge space for a Chicago restaurant and in the space of the old Gordon's, a place my ex-boss used to take us to celebrate work accomplishments. When Gordon closed and left Chicago, he moved to Camden where he became increasingly bitter about life and disparaged people who lived here as unsophisticated. We had Gordon to dinner here one night and he regaled us with tales that are too sordid to type about! Well, ole Gordon moved on and moved to New Zealand to become a Sommolier...good for Gordon.
Anyway, I digress...NAHA was a great place for lunch. I had the best Rustic Chicken Ceasar salad that had lightly seasoned roasted potatoes, juicy chicken, shaved parm, oil cured tomatos, garlic crutons and wonderfully fresh greens. My client had the roasted chicken salad with Crimson Raisins, Pine Nuts and Fava Beans. By Chicago standards for lunch, it wasn't pricey at $14.00 a salad. We were good and had water and nothing else and got out of there for $32.00. The decor was very swanky, done in muted chocolate suedes and grays. The service was fantastic, I had someone pour water for me evertime I took a sip from my glass. I loved it.

Everything gets an A here.

Enjoy,
Seth