Scenes from a Terrapin Tailgate (Part 1)

A Fall Saturday means College Football in many places…including the DC area. With the games come plenty of tailgating…a great opportunity to enjoy good food, drink, and company before (or after) football games. It’s also a great opportunity to celebrate or vent… depending on how well the team is doing.

Our alma mater, Maryland*, isn’t doing so hot this year, but that doesn’t stop many of the Terrapin Faithful (and we among them) from supporting the team in whatever way we can.

Dan and I were invited to tag along with a couple of our friends after the UMD-Clemson game a few weeks ago (a noon game). Before the jump will be a few shots to set the scene…

Below, a view from under one of the tents:

Am I seeing quadruple, or was it something I ate/drank?

Up the hill were another group of Terrapin fans tailgating…

Thanks to a group member, there was a flatscreen set up so we can see other games. Georgia-LSU was on at the time of this shot.

With this group, there’s generally a contest to see who can make the best dish within a certain theme. This game’s theme was seafood. Since I have a lot of food shots this time, they’ll be behind the jump.

Potatoes with Afritude 2: Electric Boogaloo

As promised in my original post on this recipe, a second try on Potatoes with Afritude, with update…

This time, the usual suspects (redskin potatoes) were cut a little bit longer…

Here are the potatoes with the spices and oil mixed in… The curry powder produces both a wonderful yellow color on the potatoes and an equally nice scent.

The unfortunate thing about curry powder, though is it makes everything it touches yellow, and that tint doesn’t go away easily (I think there’s still a yellow curry powder mix spot on the counter).

…and the finished potatoes…ready for the potluck.

This batch of Potatoes with Afritude was made for the same potluck party I made the Adobong Gulay. I’d say I’m almost there… I don’t remember if I actually mixed the spices and olive oil in separate batches like I said I would (since I was doing a lot of cooking…) , but this batch definitely had a better balance between potato and spice than the first try.

On a Fish Broiling Kick…

Yep.. we’ve been getting mileage out of our toaster oven broiler lately. Below is a quick, easy, and healthy recipe for broiled tilapia fillets that we made on quite a few occasions in the past few weeks…

Broiled Tilapia with Garlic – from Gina’s Weight Watcher Recipes

• 6 tilapia fillets (6oz)
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp parsley
• salt and pepper
• 1 lemon

Wash fish and pat dry. Line broiler pan with tin foil. Place fish on the tin foil and season with salt, pepper, oregano, and parsley. Drizzle with olive oil and top with crushed garlic. Set broiler to low and place fish about 8 inches from the flame. Cook until fish is cooked through, about 7 minutes (be careful not to burn garlic). Serve with freshly squeezed lemon juice

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Since I didn’t have regular ol’ ground pepper at the time, I sprinkled the fish with the lemon pepper that I had handy.  I didn’t exactly measure the herbs either…just sprinkled them onto the fish as necessary…

The garlic was crushed, then diced (Thanks, Dan!)…

Since I was also using a toaster oven broiler, the cooking time was increased to 15 minutes… A couple of looks at the finished product:

“Date Night” with Lotsa Pesto

Last month, I went with Dan and Dork to Adega Wine Cellars and Cafe in nearby Silver Spring for dinner (our party was supposed to be larger, but our fourth was not feeling well at the time).

Adega serves mostly lighter fare… wraps, sandwiches, salads, flatbreads, burgers, and pasta. Dan and I tried their weekend wine and dine special (also known as their date night special), which allowed us to have an appetizer, two entrees, and a bottle of one of their featured wines for $35.00. Dork went with an entree of his own and had some of our appetizer and wine (Dan’s not really a wine person).

For our appetizer, we picked fried calamari… The pieces toward the back made me feel like I was eating a whole squid… (heh).

It was a little oily (as exhibited by the platters and the bottommost piece of the bottom photo), but otherwise good…well-balanced flavors and the squid wasn’t too chewy…

Both Dan and Dork chose the Penne Pesto with Chicken for their entrees… Both guys liked the dish, though I’d say Dork is the bigger pesto fan of the two…

I went with the Greco Flatbread, pictured below.  Their flatbread is pizzalike and mine was loaded with pesto, veggies, and cheese.

Definitely liked that the thin flatbread crust remained crispy all the same. A closer shot shows the pesto and veggies…

For many items on Adega’s menu, it may be more cost-effective to get items a-la-carte, rather than taking up the date night special (unless the featured wine is on the more expensive side, and yes… wine can be). If the combination of what you want (appetizer, entrees, wine) works right, though, the date night special is well worth it…

A serendipitous find for me there that night was a small stash of Saranac...  Yep… they sell some beer along with all those wines… 

Another cool thing about Adega is if you purchase a wine from their store to go with your dinner, they’ll open it up and serve it to you. Their staff is also generally very friendly, and I what food I’ve tried so far, I’ve liked (mental note: try the eggplant or sweet potato fries sometime).  All-in-all, I’m perfectly willing to come back to Adega again, even though I rarely frequent DTSS venues due to an incident there a couple of years ago.

Adobong Gulay

While I have made a spinach version before (there’s also adobong sitaw with Asian green beans), this was my first shot at this version of adobo. It was made for a potluck party attended by classmates old and new and a few of my professors…

…Proof positive that you can adobo just about anything! The below recipe is from Bobbiy at Sparkrecipies:

Adobong Gulay

Ingredients:

• 1 large raw onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp. peppercorn
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
• ½ cup raw potato, diced
• 1 lb. Japanese Eggplant, cubed
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• ¼ cup palm or white vinegar
• dash of black pepper
• dash of granulated sugar

Instructions: In a pan, heat oil, and then add peppercorn and bay leaves. When the bay leaves start to turn brown, add the garlic. Saute until brown. Then add the onion and fry until translucent. Add the pepper and the sugar, stir briefly to mix, and then add the soy sauce and vinegar. Lower heat to medium, and then add the potatoes and eggplant. Stir briefly then simmer, covered, around 20 minutes for the potatoes and the eggplant. They should be soft but not mushy. Add water if liquid level drops too low. You don’t want to burn this dish. You just need enough liquid to cover the ingredients.

Serve over rice. Serves up to 8 people depending on how much you want to make.

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Below are shots of the diced eggplant…Unfortunately, Giant didn’t have Japanese eggplant, but the big ol’ purple ones worked fine…

Probably my most common food shot, but… Hail to the Redskins!

I generally smash garlic against the blade of a big Japanese cleaver. Sure I can use a garlic press, but there’s something therapeutic about smashing things…

Garlic, bay leaves, and peppercorn smelled wonderful cooking in oil. Afterward, I added the onion, vinegar, and soy sauce…

While the dish might not have ended up as pretty as I would have liked, it tasted good…

I think next time, I should put the potato in before the eggplant, especially if I’m using redskins (despite what the recipe says). I also should cut the onion just a little bit larger and not process it any further.

Potatoes with Afritude…Sorta…

Sunday Morning:

Dan: You know, we have some leftover potatoes. We need to cook them soon.
Sabine: I think I have just the recipe for them…

I stumbled on AJ’s Disney Food Blog the night before, where I remembered looking at a recipe for one of Boma’s* offerings: Potatoes with Afritude. While I don’t recall having this dish when my brother, sister, and I had breakfast at Boma during our August weekend at Disney (I also am not the best at taking pictures when buffets are involved), and Dan never dined at Boma,  it seemed like a simple, tasty, and relatively healthy recipe… It was definitely worth a try.

The recipe is below:

POTATOES WITH AFRITUDE, Boma, Animal Kingdom Lodge
Yield: 10 servings

Ingredients:

• 5 lbs. Red Skinned Potatoes (any variety of potato may be used)
• 2 ounces Olive Oil
• 3 T. Curry Powder
• 2 T. Turmeric
• 1 T. Garlic Powder
• 1 T. Paprika
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Note: I added 1 T. Light Brown Sugar… (per a commenter suggestion on Disney Food Blog)

Method: Wash potatoes well, and cut into wedges. In a large bowl mix the spices and olive oil. Add the raw potatoes. Coat the potatoes with the spice mixture. Place the potatoes on a baking sheet, place in a preheated 350 degree oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Credit: DisneyRecipes.homestead.com via http://www.disneyfoodblog.com/ .

The leftovers Dan referred to were a small amount of reds. I supplemented them with a russet initially and later added another…

I wedged the potatoes the way I would when I make herbed potato wedges.

For visual reference: here are the herbed potatoes I was talking about (these are tossed in olive oil, garlic salt, and thyme and/or rosemary before baking at 350 degrees).

Back to the potatoes I was making this afternoon: I then added the olive oil and spices like I would have with the aforementioned herbed potatoes. They were then placed in a cookie sheet to bake per the recipe.

I ended up cooking them closer to 45 minutes to an hour after mixing them up at the 30 minute point and discovering the reds weren’t quite cooked all the way through.

Here’s how they looked coming out of the oven:

And a couple of finished product shots: A little closer each time…

While these potatoes certainly taste like they could come out of Boma and passed the Dan taste test, the finished product definitely didn’t look like the “Potatoes with Afritude” pictures I’d seen on Disney Food Blog or Dining in Disney.

Changes I’ll make next time:

• Cutting the potato wedges a little longer (and perhaps thinner?)
• Actually referring to the blog pictures…
• Making sure I actually mix the spices and the olive oil separately before adding the potatoes (as the recipe indicates).
• Either making sure I actually have 5 lbs of potatoes (I had about 2.5-3 lbs on hand between both russets and the reds) or doing a better job at adjusting the proportion of spices.

Things I probably won’t change:

• Adding the 1 T. brown sugar to the recipe.

You can almost bet there will be a follow-up blog post when I make my tweaks… We’ll also see which way we also end up liking best…

*Boma is a buffet-style restaurant in the Animal Kingdom Villas’ Jambo House.

Broiled Salmon With Breadcrumbs

Acquired a few years ago through a couple of friends who were moving, our old toaster was unfortunately getting a little bit troublesome. It’d often take several turns for me at “high” setting for me to even get toast to a medium brown, and while I had figured out the crumb tray, it was still a little unwieldy to clean. Crumbs would also fall out of the tray without Dan and I having opened it. While it served us well, it was the old toaster’s time to go…

*Plays taps for the old toaster*

In the past, I also hadn’t attempted to broil things using our gas stove. While the apartment’s stove had a broiler, it was close to the ground, and I’d invariably have to stoop. All of these problems were solved when Dan and I bought a new toaster oven (pictured later). Now we can toast, broil, bake, and clean things out with relatively little fuss and guesswork.

Today, I gave the new toaster oven’s broiler a try, making a variation of simple recipe for salmon that my mom originally taught me (I think there’s enough variation between her version and mine that I can safely share this one…)

Only a few ingredients are needed for this dish: salmon (steaks were used in this recipe since they were less expensive at the store, but fillets work fine, too), olive oil, garlic salt and breadcrumbs.

First, I brushed the salmon steaks with olive oil.

Yeah, I know that’s a pastry brush, but I work with what I have…

The salmon steaks are then sprinkled liberally with garlic salt (naturally, sprinkle to taste). Once done, they look like they do below:

The breadcrumbs are added last before being sent to the broiler… I tried to make sure the top was as covered as much as possible. The broiler pan ws also lined with aluminum foil and nonstick cooking spray for ease of cleanup…

Here are a couple of steaks in the toaster oven. Depending on how good your broiler is, it can stay as few as 10 minutes or as much as 20 minutes…

After spending 15 minutes in the toaster oven, the steaks are done… The bread crumbs are browned a little, and the salmon is fully cooked and ready to nom!

Sanaa, Sanaa…*

During the next-to-last weekend in August, my brother and I met up with my sister in Orlando, FL. She’s a huge Disney fan and also a member of their Vacation Club, so we stayed at one of the Disney Resorts: The Animal Kingdom Lodge. She’s normally stationed in Japan and was stateside for a short time, so it was easier for all of us to meet her there instead of having her hop from place to place.

The really cool thing about staying at the Lodge, especially the recently-opened Kidani Village, is that you can see animals roaming around outside almost everywhere you go…

Before heading home, my sister and had a huge lunch at Sanaa, an African-Indian fusion restaurant located in Kidani Village. Don’t confuse it with the Yemeni City.

Like most Disney Theme Parks and Resorts, a high amount of attention is paid to ambiance and detail. Below is a picture of one of the booths at Sanaa. Fortunately, the restaurant wasn’t that crowded:

As usual when I have a lot of food shots, the actual edibles/potables are after the jump…

Touring the Matt Brewery…

The last weekend of August, Dan’s family and I went up to visit some of their family friends and relatives in Upstate New York. While most of our time was spent around Syracuse, we took a side trip to Utica to tour the Matt Brewery.

Best known for their Saranac and Utica Club beers, Matt (formerly the West End Brewery) was founded in 1888, one of the oldest family-owned breweries in the US (Yuengling is actually older). Matt has also partnered with smaller breweries to  such as Brooklyn, Magic Hat, and Lake Placid…mainly to help out with production and distribution.

Pictured below is Matt’s current line of brews: Mostly Saranac. On the top top left is Ubu Ale from partner Lake Placid.

Matt also produces a line of yummy sodas: (l-r) root beer, diet root beer,  orange cream, ginger beer, and a shirley temple soda.

Sodas were produced under the Utica Club brand during Prohibition… You can see a bottle from that era on the left.

After Prohibition, Matt started producing beers again under the Utica Club brand. Commercials featuring Spokesmugs Shultz and Dooley (And a cast of other colorful characters) appeared in the 50’s and 60’s promoting naturally-made beer.

These guys were pretty funny. Here’s Schultz and Dooley in Action… landing on the moon.

Below are some loose malt and hops: Malt is generally made from barley, generally adding more to a beer’s flavor and body…

Since Malt tends to be sweet, hops are added to balance the brew out. Your hoppier beers tend to be bitter.

Below is an outline of the brewing process…

Below: passing by the cereal cooker, which cooks the malt and helps to convert it into mash…

The mash filter helps to separate liquid from any undissolved solids… Most of us don’t really like extra fiber in our brewskis…

The liquid is boiled for a time in brew kettles. At this point, hops are added…

Had to get another shot of the top thanks to the neat striations on the kettle…

After straining, the liquid moves to the fermenting tanks. Yeast is then added, and the mixture is often kept for a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, due to construction we didn’t see the aging and packaging stages (perhaps still recovering from their 2008 fire or expanding… or both). We were told the aging vats looked the same as the fermenting tanks, though.

This allowed us to fast forward to, IMHO, the best part of the Matt Brewery tour: Sampling! Matt doesn’t give you a namby-pamby sample… Matt gives you two full pints of whatever you want to sample! Two pints for a 5-Buck tour?  Many varieties on tap?! Brilliant!

Below is Saranac’s Black Forest. I tasted a little too much bitterness for what I thought a Schwarzbier would have had. Perhaps if I had it a hair warmer than ice-cold…Perhaps because I tasted the hops last… Overall, not bad at all…

Dan made a mess with his Shirley Temple soda… Not a good sign, given I was the only one having alcohol…

Saranac’s Adirondack Lager was the Brewery’s classic German Amber lager… It also ended a little hoppy, but overall fairly drinkable.

Dan told me Anheiser-Busch never gave out that large of samples, so I was a very happy gal… Here’s me enjoying my Adirondack Ale…

I generally don’t like my beers hoppy, so the two varieties I tried were relatively good choices. I would happily drink the Black Forest again. I look forward to seeing the rest of the brewery sometime after construction, and maybe I can give their Pomegranate Wheat and Black and Tan a shot, too… (Sure… I can get Saranac by the bottle here, but getting it on tap is tougher in the DC Area…)

Update: Yep… I definitely made the error of not letting the beer warm up a little. Both brews are definitely to be consumed cool, but not ice cold.

DC Restaurant Week: Bistro Bis

On previous Restaurant Weeks, members of my immediate circle of friends have tried a number of steakhouses, Georgia Brown’s, the Melting Pot, Vidalia (though I’d love to try it myself sometime), McCormick and Schmick’s, and iRicci (mentioned last and unlinked for a reason…the experience completely sucked). Some of us hadn’t had French Cuisine while living in the DC Area. I, like others in our group were looking for new, unique experiences.

Ultimately, we decided on Bistro Bis, a Capitol Hill venue specializing in French cuisine. Some of us had a great experience at Bis’s sister restaurant, Vidalia. I personally haven’t been to any French Restaurant in recent memory, and there were many dishes I’d heard of but hadn’t tried.

It was a pretty full house when we were seated, but not a surprise for an evening during restaurant week. By the time we got settled, a couple of tables had left… More diners would soon take their place…

Food after the jump, as I took a lot of shots…