The State Fair is long gone, but I’m just now getting caught up on a few sets of photos.
Five days at the fair allowed me to capture many fair moments – below is a series of my favorites.
It was tough…but we managed through it – shot photos of all the new foods at the fair for Metromix. A big thanks to Sarah for taking on this whirlwind tour of the fair with me! Check out the rest of the photos here.
I have plans to be back at the fair a few more times over the next week, so I’ll share as I go along. So far, my favorites are the Sunnies in a Boat and the Krumkake. Of course, Summit on a Stick was also a welcome afternoon treat.
While I like to have a good time, I have to admit that bachelorette parties get a little much for me nowadays. So when I got the invite for a friend’s bachelorette party at Spill the Wine for a five-course dinner with wine pairings, I was ecstatic! Food, wine, friends…perfect!
The group of fifteen of us gathered there a few Saturdays ago, seated on the wine bar side as the restaurant was full with a wedding reception. *What a great idea for a wedding reception location!* Individual menus printed with both the courses and the wines sat waiting for us, which of course I loved!
The first course was a salad with radishes and a mango vinaigrette paired with a Radcliffe sauvignon blanc. The salad was good, perhaps a little too much vinaigrette on mine, but it paired well with the light sauvignon blanc. *You may notice the hefty wine pours from the previous picture…I wasn’t complaining!
The next course was a beautiful piece of salmon (a generous portion in my opinion) with warm peaches and balsamic vinegar. I loved the salmon, but wasn’t crazy about the Valley of the Moon chardonnay it was paired with – it had absolutely no flavor.
The third course was my favorite. Perhaps this was because it was comfort food and I had had two glasses of wine by this time, but I loved the wild mushroom croquette with cream sauce. The table was buzzing about how good this dish was, which I equated to a scoop of hot dish with a lightly crisp exterior. Yum! And the wine – Luzon monastrell/syrah was a very nice pairing.
Unfortunately the next course, grilled beef tenderloin kabobs with red onion and peppers, was a flop. Overcooked, dry and absolutely no seasoning sums up this course. The Root 1 cabernet sauvignon was good, but not good enough to save the dish.
Last, but definitely not least, we were served dessert. Vanilla bean ice cream with a triple berry coulis (the menu only listed raspberry so the additional berries were a yummy bonus)! Paired with a sweet dessert wine, I was in heaven. There is something so simple and tasty about ice cream and berries.
I’ve always really liked Spill the Wine. They have a nice wine menu and good wine specials – $15 bottles of wine during happy hour and 1/2 priced bottles on Mondays. The food is good – the salads are consistently great.
And our wine dinner?
Overall it was good. It had its highs and it had its lows. However, for the bargain price of $35 for five-courses plus wine, I thought it was a great deal and a fantastic idea for a bachelorette party.
I can’t believe so much time has passed since my last post. Work has been busy (yay!) and I also did a little traveling back home and to Chicago. I’m still getting caught up on some deadlines, so I won’t do a full post today. Instead, I’ll share a few of my favorite photos from a “recent” trip to Florida. (*Recent was in April – personal photos just don’t get turned around as quickly these days.)
This was a birthday getaway for me and my friend Kate – the Big 30 – so we headed to Key West and Miami with our husbands to celebrate. Photos are from both places – the food photos are from a yummy little lunch spot located in a strip mall in Miami – Jimmy’z Kitchen. More photos are in my Flickr photo stream (linked to the right).
My weekends have always been busy. With my new career change, however, I’ve found myself even busier…sometimes when I step back from it all, I can only say “Wow!” But I love the change and look forward to weekends more than ever. This weekend was no exception. It started off with a visit to the new North Minneapolis bar/restaurant – Victory 44 – open just since May 1st. For photos and more info, check out my write-up on Metromix.
Saturday morning, we headed down to the Mill City Farmers Market. Last weekend was opening weekend, but I was out of town so I missed it. Some of the same vendors from last year were there and some new ones as well – should be a good summer! I’m super excited that Bread Coffee and Cake is selling bread there – remember the chorizo bread? Yum! We picked up some jam from Lucille’s Kitchen Garden and some organic lilacs from Shining Hills Farms in Wisconsin. They really brighten up my kitchen!
After the market, I headed out for a day of shopping and cooking. Check out Heavy Table tomorrow (Tuesday the 19th) to see what kind of cooking Lori and I were up to. As soon as I returned home, it was time to prepare our dishes for our Cooking Club meal. More on the dishes and meal in another post. But, as always, Cooking Club was a blast!
Sunday morning we got up and decided to make crepes (the leftover batter was from our French cooking theme the night before…) I had a bunch of rhubarb as well, so made some rhubarb syrup to pair with them, topped with candied pecans and powdered sugar. The crepes were good – tart and sweet – but something was missing. I think they lacked a dollop of whipped cream on top. Next time…
That afternoon, after running errands, we headed to Ed and Carly’s to start planning for our vegetable garden. I don’t have a spot to garden (only potted herbs for me), so we decided we would give it a go at their house. Between the garden and the CSA that starts in June, I think we’ll have plenty of veggies this summer! We had planned to rent a tiller and get all the prep done, but unfortunately the rental shop was closed. We were forced to sit back, have a beer (or two or three) and enjoy the beautiful day. Ah, shucks!
Carly then humored us and made Mexican food for dinner – fajitas! She served them with a black bean salsa over spinach leaves. Fresh, fantastic and I didn’t have to cook – the weekend couldn’t have had a better ending!
Has anyone tried it and can give it a recommendation? Does it live up to its (almost) world famous title?
It’s funny to think that I had high hopes for these Choco Bananas – but I did. I mean, it’s chocolate and bananas…right? Even Laffy Taffy managed to make a palatable product with their banana substance – and they provided us corny jokes as entertainment as well!
Despite Choco Banana’s claim of “made with real Chiquita bananas”, I don’t recommend this food (can you even call it that?) item.
Tasting notes from others who tried our Choco Bananas:
“Fake banana flavor followed by something sour…Bleh!”
“Undeniably tasty, in an Austrian sort of way.”
“Oh…choco-banana-licious!”
“Moderately tolerable despite its innate weirdness.”
I’d like to think this wasn’t my fault, but I walked into the storm last Thursday with full knowledge of the consequences. There is no one to blame but me.
Rewind eight days to researching how to make jucy lucys for this Heavy Table video. I’ll skip the details, but let’s just say that I managed to eat four jucy lucys in five days and had drawn up the white flag in surrender. No more jucy lucys for a while…or so I thought.
The Thursday after making the video, Kyle and I attended a wine tasting at Sorella Wine and Spirits. We love Sorella and had heard of a South American wine tasting class put on by the Wine Company, a representative of which had recently returned from a trip to Chile and Argentina and would be sharing his experience and some wines from those regions. I had been to wineries in Chile and Argentina when in South America in 2007, so I was looking forward to it, knowing it couldn’t possibly live up to the actual experiences, but was hoping to at least be introduced to some new wines from those regions that are available in the US. The class was mediocre, but we did try a few wines that we liked – Bianchi Torrontes, Errazuriz Wild Ferment Chardonnay (my favorite), Bianchi Malbec and Errazuriz Cabernet Sauvignon – so we were pretty happy about that.
The problem is, when it comes to tasting wine…I don’t follow the rules. I know you’re supposed to just taste the wine and then pour out the rest, but nine times out of ten I don’t. I just drink it. So, after tasting ten or so wines that night, I was getting a bit pickled. Not to mention ravenous.
The Blue Door Pub
As expected, The Blue Door Pub was packed when we arrived so we waited a bit in the crowded room for a table – ordering a couple beers to tide us over. When our table finally opened up, we barely glanced at the menu (although it is quite an extensive listing of juicy blucy offerings) and put in our order. I went with their signature Blucy Lucy (stuffed with garlic and blue cheese) and Kyle hit up their special, the Merriam Park Lucy (stuffed with blue cheese, garlic and bacon and topped with red currant jelly).
Let me first talk about Kyle’s burger. It was a little on the underdone side, unfortunately, but it was tasty. We agreed that the red currant jelly on top was the perfect sweet accompaniment to the salty burger, but wished the bacon had been crisp and that there had been a little more cheese inside. Overall a great tasting burger with a ton of potential with a bit of tweaking.
As for the Blucy Lucy? Honestly, I know it was partly due to the combination of all the wine, beer and lack of water I had had that day, but that burger truly rocked me. The amount of blue cheese stuffed inside the half pound burger was insane – and it didn’t taste like cheap blue cheese but was creamy and dry. The garlic was the perfect background flavor to it, not overpowering but definitely present. Overall I really liked this lucy – it was my first experience with a lucy outside the traditional American cheese version – but, it dominated me. I finished it, but was cowering inside as I did. Beer was left on the table and fries were left in my burger basket…and I pled for mercy.
The Blue Door Pub will definitely be on my list to try again, after a short jucy lucy detox period, of course. With proper training (hydration), I think I could hold my ground with the Blucy Lucy. I still prefer the traditional American cheese version of the jucy lucy best – The Nook and Matt’s rock this scene – but The Blue Door Pub is a nice twist on the Minnesota favorite.
The Blue Door Pub
St. Paul, MN
A couple weekends ago our Cooking Club gathered at our friends’ Brian and Jill’s house for a Taste of San Francisco themed menu. Brian wrote an eloquent description of the evening as our invitation, so here is the abridged version below.
“First off, we will be touring the wine country to collect our wine for the meal and tastings of cheeses and crackers. Then we will be heading down into San Francisco to flavor some local feast. After we “taste” some wine and clear our pallets with cheese, we will be stopping off at Fisherman’s Wharf/South Beach for some Acme Chop House salad lasagna, followed by a quick jaunt to The Mission (district) where we will be visiting Panchita’s Restaurant #2 for some Pupusas. That’s the starters, still hungry?
Main menu will involve the poultry flavor and a bit of garlic to your liking in the heart of North Beach. The Stinking Rose is famous in San Francisco, but for those who are not garlic fans (forty clove garlic chicken), you can quickly hop over to Chinatown for some House of Nanking Paper Wrapped Chicken, sorry we opted not to display the Dim Sum on this menu. We’ll have some butternut squash brought in as well for dinner from the Grand Café in Union Square.
Finally, we’ll be hopping on the trolley car up and down famous Hyde Street to The Hyde Street Bistro for dessert. Chocolate soufflé anyone? The Hyde Street Bistro is my favorite, quaint, off the beaten path restaurant in San Francisco and their desserts are to die for. Coffee to top the night off in the Russion Hill area with some Buena Vista Pub Irish Coffee.”
Per our Cooking Club format, Kyle and I were given tasks of bringing a bottle of wine and some cheese for tasting and making papusas. Wine and cheese…easy stuff. Papusas? I had never even heard of them, much less made them. So I ‘phoned a friend’ for some help. She filled me in on how they should look and taste (El Salvadorian corn cakes filled with cheese or meat and served with a tomato sauce and a spicy pickled cole slaw), but then when left to my interpretation I messed up a pretty significant step. In short, corn flour is not a direct substitute for masa harina. Therefore the first batch of papusas, while not horrific tasting were heavy and sat in my stomach like a brick (these bricks are pictured above). Kyle, sensing a meltdown, ran to a hispanic market in Northeast, bought some masa harina and we quickly made a new batch for Cooking Club. Disaster averted, and I have to say they turned out quite tasty!
My favorites of the evening, however, were the Nanking Paper Wrapped Chicken – neatly folded envelopes of chicken with a light cilantro flavor – and the molten chocolate cake – no elaboration needed…it was molten, it was chocolate and it was cake. I included the recipe below that they used for these cakes, they will definitely be made at my house soon.
Overall I was impressed with the research of the menu and creativity to pull it all together. The next menu belongs to Chad and Vickie and there were rumors of a French cooking theme. Sounds like a good time to me!
Molten Chocolate Cakes
Makes 6
Sauce
4 ½ oz. bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1/3 c. hot water
¼ c. light corn syrup
¾ tsp peppermint extract
CAKES
5 oz. bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
10 TBSP (1 ¼ sticks) unsalted butter
3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
1 ½ c. powdered sugar
½ c. all purpose flour
Vanilla ice cream
FOR SAUCE: Stir both chocolates in top of double boiler over barely simmering water until melted. Add 1/3 cup hot water, corn syrup and extract; whisk until smooth. Remove from over water. Cool slightly. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Cover, chill. Before serving rewarm in saucepan over low heat stirring constantly).
FOR CAKES: Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Butter six ¼ cup soufflé dishes or custard cups. Stir chocolate and butter in heavy medium saucepan over low heat until melted. Cool slightly. Whisk eggs and egg yolks in large bowl to blend. Whisk in sugar, then chocolate mixture and flour. Pour batter into dishes, dividing equally. (Can be made one day ahead. Cover. Chill).
Bake cakes until sides are set but center remains soft and runny, about 11 minutes or up to 14 minutes for batter that was refrigerated. Run small knife around cakes to loosen. Immediately turn cakes out onto plates, Spoon sauce around cakes. Serve with ice cream.
