Cocktails and Science

In previous posts I’ve outlined my love of food science, and of Harold McGee particularly. And of course, my affection for cocktails is well–documented. So it will come as no surprise to hear that when I had the opportunity to hear the man himself talk about the science of cocktails, I was all over it.

I gave the heads up to my friend Jess, another avid cocktail fan, and we set out to get schooled. Joining Mr.McGee was Dave Arnold, the Director of Culinary Technology at The French Culinary Institute. Basically, the way the lecture worked was that Dave would do something crazy onstage, usually involving fire, then hand out the resultant samples while Harold would talk about the science of taste and the physical properties of alcohol. In other words, it was awesome.

This was bourbon mixed with the very essence of banana – banana juice, if you will. It was uncanny.

Scotch with all of its impurities removed (but not its flavor). It was weird – the skeleton of Scotch.

The best part of the night came when Dave made his recipe for Red Hot Ale, a drink that dates back to Colonial times. First, he demonstrated the method with a hot poker – the drink was traditionally made by sticking irons from the hearth into a mug.

Clearly, that’s no longer a practical option, so Dave invented his own hot poker. Alas, it’s not really ready for the average bar just yet.

So then he showed us his stove-top method, which was…dramatic.

That’s Harold and a lab assistant, singeing off their eyebrows.

This was easily the most delicious drink of the night, despite (because of?) the fireworks. Here’s a recipe if you’re interested – I’ll admit I have a slight fear of burning alcohol. Maybe one day I’ll get brave enough, though, because the caramelized beer and cognac is truly remarkable.

They also played around with making stable oil emulsions with pumpkin seed oil, making for a thick, fatty drink that won’t separate:

A combo of gum arabic and xanthan gum achieves this magic. I wasn’t incredibly into this particular drink, but the idea of making truly stable emulsions is intriguing – perhaps a different oil would have been more enjoyable.

My favorite actual science moment of the night came when Harold explained why adding water to spirits like whiskey enhances its flavor – something that has always fascinated me. Essentially, it all comes down to the fact that ethanol, the alcohol we drink, attracts aroma molecules. Aroma molecules (remember, most of taste is really smell) hang out little molecular cages on the ethanol because they’re similar in structure to it.This stops them from reaching your nose. On the other hand, they HATE water. When you add water to a drink you drop the concentration of the alcohol and these aroma compounds, break free from their cages for us to enjoy. Here’s a more coherent explanation from Harold himself.

Speaking of which, this post took me so darn long to get out that I’m leaving it mostly pictures. Here’s a better recap of the actual science at the lecture by Frederick Yarm, who is a far more dedicated cocktail blogger than I am. (If you are at all interested in mixology, and especially if you live in Boston, you should be reading his blog.)

Harvard does a whole series of these lectures using McGee’s On Food and Cooking as the text, and the guest lectures, all by amazing chefs and food scientists, are open to the public. If you’re local to Cambridge check them out!

A Continued Journeyman

When last we left our intrepid heroines,their senses had been tantalized by two of their five-course Journeyman meal (with a little, delicious lardo interlude). Tune in now for Journeyman, Part II: The Entree Initiative.

Our next course was the fish (no shells!: bluefish atop salt cod, with sea beans, a muscadet foam, and more of that heavenly lardo. There are people in the world who don’t like bluefish, finding it too oily. I am not one of these people, perhaps because I’ve only ever eaten bluefish in nice restaurants, where they know what to do with this oiliness – basically use it to make the crispiest, most delicious fish skin of all time. The sea beans and cod added a pleasant saltiness to contrast with the sweet muscadet foam and the fatty lardo. I put a little heart next to the lardo in my notes, because I loved it so.

Next, the main course – lamb two ways:

The two ways the lamb came were braised in barley milk, served atop a little bed of bulgur wheat, and roasted, simply but perfectly. The accompaniments were blackened pistachio puree and autumn olive puree. (Our server helpfully explained that autumn olive is not really an olive, but sort of a berry. I helpfully explained that I was well aware of what an autumn olive is. I fear I have not totally mastered the gentle art of smiling and nodding.) There were also black trumpet mushrooms on the plate, which were pleasantly chewy, but unexciting. Unlike the rest of the dish, which was VERY exciting. The braised lamb was very tender and its little bed tasted, fascinatingly, of almonds. The roast lamb, while it sounds boring, was divine. Tender, cooked to perfection, everything a little lamb should be, and the purees just enhanced it. A lovely fall meal.

Prior to dessert coming, we were informed, a palate cleanser would be served, and after dessert there would be a surprise “thank you.” We asked if we could try the milk punch with dessert, since we’d not selected a dessert wine (it was actually what sounded like a very good vermouth) as part of our beverage pairing. Alas, we were told, the milk punch was nearly gone, but there would be enough for us to sample it. Huzzah!

The palate cleanser was delightful, a greek yogurt ice cream atop a watermelon gelee. Watermelon is not the most aggressive flavor, which I suppose is appropriate when cleansing the palate, but it was sweet, which partnered nicely with the tart ice cream and a wee bite of chiffonaded mint.

The milk punch arrived:

The beverage fellow was the most enthusiastic I saw him all night when we asked about the process of making the punch (he was perfectly lovely the rest of the night, just a bit soft-spoken. This brought him out of his shell.) For those who don’t know, milk punch is made by combining liquor (traditionally brandy or rum), milk, and citrus. The citrus curdles the milk – you then strain off the solids and are left with a clear, but still creamy, liqueur, which can then be flavored how you like. This one was meant to taste like a root beer float, and the root beer taste was very clear. I smell a project coming.

Our dessert proper, the “Three Apples,” came next. That’s a brioche filled with Scotch cream, a caramelized apple with Madeira creme anglaise, and an apple sorbet atop house-made graham cracker crumbs. I think I liked this last the best – it was intensely, purely apple. The others were pleasant, and I liked the smoky Scotch cream, but if I’d had my druthers I’d probably just as soon had another plate of lardo. In the battle between sweet and salty to win my heart, salty takes every round.

That said, our surprise was quite nice, and perhaps just more up my dessert-alley:

Housemade marshmallows, super-dark chocolate brownies, and the teeniest little creme brulees you ever saw! Isn’t it cute? The marshmallow tasted of lemon, and the brownies were barely sweet and intensely fudgy, which love. Since I am not a huge fan of custard, but a GIANT fan of burnt sugar, this was also just about the most perfect helping of creme brulee I can imagine.

All told, Journeyman did not disappoint. It’s definitely not an everyday sort of meal – it’s expensive, and the presentation is all about theater and lingering over your meal. But if you have something, or several somethings, to celebrate, I can’t think of a more intimate and lovely way to so!

Also, they’re working on building an attached bar, called Backbar, to open sometime soon. You better believe I’ll be checking it out!

Fantastic Journey..man

This is the story of two little ladies who embarked on a quest, and ended up finding far more adventure and magic than they had even imagined!

Or maybe it’s just the story of two friends trying to make dinner plans, and finally getting around to it. But they were truly AMAZING dinner plans, as you will soon see. Fantastic, even.

It all started nearly a year ago, when I read about a new restaurant that had opened up in Union Square. I don’t remember where I read about it, truth be told, but I was enchanted by the description – super local, super seasonal set dinner menus of 3, 5 or 7 courses, with a few molecular gastronomy-style flourishes. Not the sort of place you could enjoy some good old-fashioned down-home cooking, but rather a stage on which to enjoy the whole experience of food. I wrote to beloved dining companion Nandi, and we made plans to head to this restaurant, this Journeyman, as soon as a suitable celebratory occasion presented itself. And present themselves they did!

She won a football pool, and got the job of her dreams! I got betrothed, and finished a prestigious leadership workshop! We both ran countless races, including a second marathon, and STILL WE DID NOT GO. Finally we decided to just make the reservations, already, and celebrate the whole lot of it, occasions be damned! Would Journeyman be able to live up to a year of build up?

We arrived spot on time for our 7:00 reservation, to discover we were the first patrons of the evening. The space is modern yet cozy, with plants filling the front window and a lovely bar in the middle at which we were encouraged sit if we liked and watch the chefs. Of course we chose these seats – I prefer to sit at a bar rather than the middle of the room whenever possible – and we were off.

We chose the 5 course, omnivore meal, after determining that none of the fish were shellfish, since they are Nandi’s deadly enemies. Our server, a dapper young man, assured us they were not, and brought us an amuse bouche to start our journey.

This was a whipped confit of tomato with garlic toast. The tomato was a veritable umami bomb – however it had been confited had rendered it into the most savory foam imaginable. The toast was deeply garlicky, crisp, and browned. During this course a young couple joined us at the bar, and we listened to them ask questions of the staff, my favorite being when the young man asked how the “Underage Teenager” Mezcal got its name. “A false cognate,” the serious young beverage manager assured him.

Even the bread and butter was lovely! Nandi dubbed the aesthetic “precious, but in a good way.”

Because I couldn’t help myself, we added an ala cart charcuterie plate to our meal. I know, I know, we already had five courses, but they had lardo! They cure it in-house, and I’m a wee bit obsessed with the stuff in general.

And now, very likely, so is Nandi. She declared it “the best morsel of food I have ever put in my mouth,” and indeed it was nutty, salty, and decadent – so thinly sliced as to melt on the tongue, and paired with delightful little pickled vegetables and seriously tasty mustard that contrasted perfectly.

It came simultaneously with our salads, which faintly embarrassed our server, I think, but bothered me not one whit.

As you can see, the salad is deconstructed (or composed, but thankfully not decomposed), wee little veggies portioned off to play nicely with different sauces, looking gorgeous on the plate. The best tidbit was the Brussels sprout, cooked as it was in clarified butter.

Following the salad was the mushroom course, an assortment of wild,locally foraged mushrooms served on a ramp puree (they freeze them in the Spring for just such an occasion!) and alongside a potato “galette” and mushroom foam.

This was quite the parade of fall flavors, even the normally vernal ramps. The potato was a buttery little wonder, and each mushroom had a distinct flavor and texture, ranging from nearly identical to the meaty chew of an oyster to delicate and shockingly sweet (that little round fella in the center). The mushroom foam was ethereal on the tongue and tasted surprisingly of lavender.

Tune in later this week for the exciting conclusion of our meal – will our intrepid young food adventurers make it to dessert? Will their quest for milk punch ever be fulfilled? Find out here!

Doggin’ It

Delicious.

Hot dogs are one of those foods that really define a person, I think. People either think they are disgusting tubes of processed meat, or they love them with a nigh-religious fervor. Personally I, like all right-thinking people, fall into the latter camp.

I mean, what’s not to love? Sure, they’re not the healthiest dinner choice in the world, but what sausage is?

Here in Boston we are fortunate to have some world-renowned hot dogs. There are Fenway Franks, of course, and Spike’s Junkyard Dogs (yeah, they originated in Rhode Island, but we lay claim to more locations now.) These are good dogs, to be sure. Fenway Franks have the weight of history behind them, and Spike’s has a variety of toppings to test your hot dog imagination. But for my money, only one venue can claim the spot of top dog, and that’s Boston Speed Dog.

It sure as heck isn’t due to the atmosphere. Boston Speed Dog is a hot dog cart in Newmarket Square, literally sitting in the center of a parking lot for several meatpacking companies, fishmongers, and fruit wholesalers. The walk across this parking lot if you visit by T, as I did one day this summer with my intrepid co-workers, is nothing short of harrowing – giant trucks barreling in and out of the lot, giant drivers honking and leering aggressively out their windows. However, the slog is worth it, because these hot dogs are amazing.

To start with, they are huge, 8 inches and a half pound each. This is good, because you’ve traveled a long way for them.

Add to that the magical process whereby they are cooked – simmered in apple cider and brown sugar, then grilled. These puppies are sweet, salty, and savory all at once, and they have a terrific snappy skin.

Finally, it’s all about the toppings.

Mustard, a house-made, cranberry-based relish, BBQ sauce, onions, and chili sauce – it sounds and looks like a big mess but it is so, so good.
All of that sweetness is balanced out by the spices and smoky taste of the dog and the tang of the onions. I can’t see getting it any way other than fully loaded.

There’s only one tiny table to sit at, but we cheerfully shared with two young men, one of whom was an enthusiastic proponent of the Speed Dog. He seemed to have been coming there since he was a wee tyke, since he knew current owner, Gregg Gale, and seemed to remember the original Ezra “Speed” Anderson. He’d clearly been several times over the summer, and expounded on his theory that you needed to embrace the messy nature of the dog. He chuckled wryly and said, “It’s not a great date place.” I disagreed, pointing out that you could learn a lot about a potential paramour if they were willing to sit in a meat-packing plant parking lot, eating the messiest hot dog known to man. That said, I’d save it for a fifth or sixth date – and bring lots and lots of napkins.

Special thanks to Karleigh Rose for the pictures on this post!

A Visit to the Dumpling House – Part II of the Dumpling Cafe

Not sure what the heck is going on? Head over here for part 1!

Despite the plethora of appetizers we’d ordered, we still had plenty of room for entrees. I think is one of the most magical things about these adventures – so many people are eating that you can really go to town on the ordering and neither be too full nor overladen with leftovers.

Our entrees were actually a bit less exciting than the appetizers, although a few daring choices were made.

This was not one of them, though it was delicious. The menu called it Diced Chicken w. Peking Sauce. Peking sauce is often an alternate name for hoisin, although confusingly it can also refer to a similar sauce called tian mian jiang, which is an amazing name for just about anything. Either way the chicken fit the profile – somewhat sweet, somewhat salty, the tiniest bit of chili. Very enjoyable and way less gloppy-sweet than your typical suburban “General Gau’s” chicken. It was good, just not terribly adventurous. I suspect we were all recovering from duck tongues and Weird Uncle Meatball.

More intriguing was the “House Special Razor Clam Meet (sic) & Pork w/Chives in Hot Sauce.” Razor clams are not commercially fished, so someone is digging those suckers right out of the beach! The little bits of pork held most of the spicy flavor (unless you ate those little atomic death chilis they put into these dishes, which I did not), and the chives were abundant in a way you don’t normally see herbs used – tasty and interesting. I might have to try it at home! There were also pieces of secret squid tucked away in the mix – they were perfectly cooked, not at all rubbery and a nice addition to the dish.

This was the Sauteed Blood with Leeks. It was my choice, mostly because I am less excited about Intestine and Pork Blood Hot Pot, which was the other option up for discussion, and I am sad to say that I made the wrong choice. The dish wasn’t bad, it was just surprisingly boring for sauteed pork blood. We were able to easily remedy it with sauces from other dishes, but perhaps I judged the intestines too harshly – no one has ever accused a mustard hot pot of being dull. I guess I will just need to go back!

This little beauty, on the hand, was not boring. In fact, it had the best sauce for doctoring the blood, along with anything else one saw fit to put it on. It’s Twice Cooked Pork, a name that doesn’t really reveal too much about how awesome this dish is. Luckily Jake pulled out his fancy-phone, did some research, and wisely recommended that we give this dish a whirl.
Holy cow. If you’re too lazy to click the link, basically the dish is pork belly boiled with ginger and salt, then fried and served with cabbage or leeks. This rendition also had a spicy-sweet chili sauce that was unbelievable on pretty much everything, including (especially?) sauteed pork blood.

All in all, Dumpling Cafe lived up to and even surpassed our expectations, even with their curious definition of meat balls. I can’t wait to go back! Armed with what we know now, I believe the team could put together a meal of truly epic proportions. And about 90 orders of soup dumplings.

Soup Dumplings, Duck Tongues, and Weird Uncles

Have I mentioned to you guys how much I love Serious Eats? Should you not know what that is (on the random off-chance that THIS is the only food blog you read), let me explain. Serious Eats is a food blog, but in a big, big way. It was created by acclaimed food critic Ed Levine, and as the name suggests they are serious about food, with daily recipes, book reviews, videos, and restaurant reviews. I got into Serious Eats because of their Food Lab column, in which J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, formerly of America’s Test Kitchen, de- and re-constructs recipes for ultimate tastiness. What can I say, it appeals to the science nerd in me. But I STAY with Serious Eats, well, for lots of reasons, but particularly because they often do features on Boston-area restaurants and food, giving me ideas for things to try and write about here. Like this one.

Now, if you’ve been a loyal reader of this blog for some time, you may remember the first time I tried soup dumplings. Truly that was a magical feast of porcine wonder. Yet here was Mr. Lopez-Alt claiming that not only were these xiao long bao better than any others served in Boston, they were the best he’d had anywhere. What was to be done but to give it a try? I gathered my intrepid dumpling crew – The Goog and The Sisters Sacchetti, with the additions of Jake, Mr. Menace, and Gary – and off we headed to Chinatown to see what delights The Dumpling Cafe had to offer us.

And oh, what delights there were!

Rather than being coy, and making you wait until the end of this tale to find out if Serious Eats did me right and the soup dumplings lived up to the hype, let’s get it out of the way first. THE SOUP DUMPLINGS WERE AMAZING. Tender little morsels of pork tucked into a thin-skinned dumpling and surrounded by a marvelously fatty, ginger and garlic flavored broth. Outstanding – you could just get six steamer baskets full of these and be in heaven, unless you hate dumplings, in which case there is something wrong with you and you should really see someone about this terrible affliction.

But that wasn’t all that Dumpling Cafe had to offer! With so many traditional Taiwanese dishes to try, our intrepid band did the only thing we could possibly do, and ordered as many dishes as it seemed humanly possible to eat.

For appetizers, in addition to the dumplings, we had:

More dumplings! But they were different dumplings. These were pan-fried duck dumplings, and they were also quite tasty, though not quite as shockingly good as the soup dumplings. Fluffy, light and pleasant, but greatly improved, as we discovered later, by the addition of sauces from other dishes.

Grilled duck tongues! Or, as the menu called them, duck tongus. (I really love Chinese restaurant misspellings and I’m afraid you’re going to have to indulge me in the litany of those from the Dumpling Cafe. Far from detracting from my restaurant experience, I think these little mistakes really enhance it.) As you can see, they are served on a stick. Everything on a stick is delicious, right? Well, to be fair, I think I liked these more than the rest of our party. They’re sort of rich and fatty, but a bit
of work because, much to the surprise of everyone at the table, ducks have a bone running through the middle of their tongues! (Of course, had we paid more attention to the very article that brought us to the restaurant, we’d have known that.) I have no idea why this is, since my preliminary research leads me to that other Serious Eats article (my other favorite column, Chi Chi Wang’s amazing “Nasty Bits.”) or information about duck calls. Either way, I think some of my dining companions were a bit put off by the fiddly little bones, but I liked the tongues quite a bit!

The “Sticky Toffee Pudding” of the evening – grilled chicken skin. In this case, people seemed surprised at how much they loved it, which I thought was funny, since I thought it was a gimme that the best part of any bird is its crispy, delicious skin. While the grilled technique rendered the skin a bit less crisp, it was made up for by the flavorful marinade it had been soaked in.

My surprise love of the night was this:

No, those eggs aren’t bad, they’re preserved! The dish is Chilled Tofu with Preserved Egg and it was wonderful – the tofu sweet and light, the egg
unctuous and creamy. I was afraid I wouldn’t like the preserved egg (also known as a “Century Egg”) due to having read about the eggs smelling of sulfur and ammonia, but I didn’t notice any smell at all and the taste was complex and rich, like the Platonic egg, a good contrast to the blander tofu.

Odd as the Century Egg was, it was not nearly as strange as the appetizer that we thought would be the most Western – the Taiwanese Meatball. When we ordered it, we’d expected little meatballs, something like what you’d get in an Italian Wedding Soup, served in a tasty sauce. The menu said it came with grary, which we surmised was meant to be gravy, although it provided an amusing nickname for Gary for the evening. Imagine our surprise when this arrived, put in front of us with the single word “pork”:

We were, to say the least, puzzled. We confirmed with the waitress that by pork she meant meatball. She had. We dug in.

It was…surprisingly tasty, though the gumminess of the gelatinous rice…shell? I guess? was a little intense. However the bits of pork and mushroom inside were deliciously meaty, and the “grary” was bright and pungent and not as sweet as it looked. Elise declared that if the chicken skin were the “back seat of the car dish” and the xiao long bao were the “girl you take home to mother dish” then the meatball was like a weird cousin that everyone is a little nervous to have over but who turns out to be kind of interesting. I thought about it and decided that weird uncle seemed more fitting, and thus Weird Uncle Meatball was born. Later research revealed that Weird Uncle Meatball is a traditional dish also known as bawan. Research also revealed that not all bawan are as gelatinous as Weird Uncle Meatball was. For all of that, as I said, he was quite tasty and worth the adventure – just be prepared for the oddity.

Tune in later this week for the second installment – our entrees!

True Adventures – Part 2

After enjoying our drinks and appetizers, it was time to get down to the serious business of dinner – the entrees.

Valerie ordered the Vietnamese Crepe:

Filled with honshimeiji mushrooms, fried tofu, and mung bean sprouts, this crisp pancake was light, flavorful, and tasty with its spicy dipping sauce.

Several folks at the table ordered the Green Curry with fried tofu, mizuna & bok choy, maitake mushrooms and black rice cake:

The curry was pleasant, mild for green curry but with a terrific hint of lime. I found it slightly salty but the black rice cake was nicely chewy and it was all well-balanced.

Speaking of balance, the flavors in the spaghettini melded perfectly:

Another popular choice at the table, it combined smoked tofu, English peas, blanched almonds, and a “cream sauce” made from cashews. The smoked tofu was incredible, with a flavor and texture like smoked gouda, a perfect complement to the sweet English peas. To my taste the homemade pasta was a bit too soft; a function, I think, of being made without eggs. Other than that, this was close to my favorite dish.

The ultimate honor, however, ended up with my own entree:

This the phyllo purse! Stuffed with seitan, roasted zucchini, and caramelized onions, surrounded by a red mole, fire roasted peppers, arugula & pepitas, this was an outstanding combination of flavors and textures. The phyllo was crisp and golden, opening to all of the treats inside. Seitan, which is made from wheat gluten, is often used as a meat substitute, although personally I like it just fine on its own merits. The mole was smoky and complex and brought out the best in all of the ingredients. Should I return to True Bistro I may have a hard time ordering anything else…

When the time came for dessert our waitress asked us if she could make some recommendations. Naturally we agreed – who better to help us make our choices? She recommended, and we ordered, the following:

The coconut pie. This was pretty much a no-brainer anyway; it’s always raved about in reviews, and it’s even won vegan baking praise from PETA. A blood orange sauce is swirled around a slice of what almost resembles a firm coconut pudding topped with toasted coconut; the crust is some sort of short bread or crumble. It’s NOT meant to be coconut cream, and so it is not, but it IS creamy on its own right. Not being the world’s biggest coconut fan (I like the taste, but the texture of dried coconut squicks me out) I liked this just okay, but LOVED the blood orange sauce. Drip that on some good vanilla and we’d have a serious winner. If you DO love coconut, this is pretty outstanding.

Her second choice was the newest dessert on the menu, a raspberry Napoleon:

Traditional Napoleons are made with puff pastry layered with pastry cream or whipped cream, and iced. Puff pastry = butter and pastry cream is out for the obvious reasons, so this was instead sugar phyllo dough with a filling of white chocolate “mousse” and topped with raspberries and a raspberry reduction. Again, the fruit here was the big winner, sweet and tart at the same time and very, very fresh. The sugared phyllo was a hit too, crispy and not too sweet. The white chocolate mousse was good and creamy, but a bit unexciting in the way that white chocolate always is.

However, the final recommendation was exciting indeed!

That, my friends, is the “death by chocolate” cake. Covered in creme anglaise and shattered caramel, this blew me away. In part this was because I was expecting chocolate cake, as in birthday cake. I do not really care for chocolate cake. It is always disappointing to me, because it doesn’t really taste like chocolate, and cake is just not my jam. It’s like sub-par, sugary bread. THIS chocolate cake, on the other hand, was a riff on flourless chocolate – creamy, intensely cacao-flavored, barely sweetened, and covered on top with one of my favorite desserts, burnt sugar. Hard to go wrong with that combination, and I was all the more impressed when I found out that it’s made with silken tofu! If I can ever get my hands on this recipe, look out!

All in all, True Bistro exceeded my expectations of what a vegan restaurant can do. My favorite dishes were those that didn’t try to replace animal products so much as demonstrate that you don’t always need them to make great food. Thank you to Mr. Menace, Elise, Valerie, Dan, Aime, Gary, Sarah and Andrew for sharing this adventure with me!

True Adventures – Part 1

So many of our adventuresome outings are focused around meat, particularly unusual (to our culture anyway) meat and meat products. Machu Picchu is a chicken grill, with an assortment of offal offerings. The Gourmet Dumpling House trip focused around pig ears and feet, and who can forget the blood-based delights of JnJ Turo-Turo or Cafe Polonia? While each of these has been wonderful, it was time for something truly bold, truly adventuresome. Something new. It was time…for veganism.

Well, to be fair, neither I nor the other intrepid foodmanauts of the Adventures in Food crew actually became vegans. For readers who may not know, vegans are vegetarians who go a step or two farther. Rather than simply not eating meat, vegans do not eat any animal product whatsoever. That means no cream, no butter, no eggs, no cheese. Depending on their reasons for choosing to practice veganism, this can extend beyond food into all animal-based products – no leather shoes, no wool sweaters – or it may be limited to culinary choices. Either way, we did not adopt this stricture for more than the constraints of one meal, but for the course of that meal we ate absolutely no animal products.

The restaurant we visited is called True Bistro, and I believe it is the first of its kind in the Boston area. That’s not to say that Boston doesn’t have any other vegan restaurants. Right down the street from True there’s a little cafe called Pulse, Grasshopper has been serving vegan Chinese food for years, and right down the street from it is Peace o’Pie, which makes vegan pizza. What made True Bistro compelling to me is that its whole purpose is to make vegan food that is upscale – a real fine-dining experience sans meat, dairy, and eggs. A far cry from tofu-scramble and curried lentils, this would be in many ways the hallmark of true creativity in cooking, if they pulled it off. I had to try it.

And so, I rounded up 8 fellow food-adventurers, including Mr. Menace, and off we went!

True Bistro does not accept reservations, so I was a bit nervous bringing in such a large party. Luckily we arrived early enough that despite another very large party dining at the same time we were able to be seated immediately. The staff was extremely courteous and readied our table very quickly, I might add!

The interior is small, but painted in white to make the most of the space and take advantage of the large picture windows that surround it. The tables were appropriately set, for an upscale establishment, with white linens and blue wildflowers in bud vases.

I started my meal with the El Diablo cocktail – normally made with creme de cassis, tequila, and ginger beer. True Bistro’s version featured a housemade black currant liqueur – apparently the commercial product isn’t vegan, and, a bit unfortunately, ginger ale. It was pretty, but a tad on the sweet side due to the ginger switch:

The sisters Sacchetti ordered the very picturesque peach sangria:

The rest of the table contented themselves with less photogenic beverages in the form of water and beer, so you don’t get to see those!

We ordered several appetizers for the table. The ravioli in lemon-thyme “cream” sauce had been much talked about, so we ordered a couple:

Bright with lemon and truly tasting of thyme, the cream sauce was amazing, and indistinguishable to me from actual cream. The ravioli themselves were filled with a wonderful pale-green sweet pea puree. The pasta itself was a bit soft, which I imagine is due to being made without eggs, something I didn’t know was even possible, frankly.

We also ordered the cornmeal-crusted oyster mushrooms. These I wish we’d gotten more of, because they were outstanding:

The mushrooms were perfectly tender and sweetly meaty, while the batter was crunchy and flavorful. Though they came with two sauces, a horseradish dill and a smear of curry, they didn’t really even need them.

We also had a gorgeous plate of malty pickles:

And some of the best fries I’ve ever eaten in my life:

Now, you may be thinking that the fries aren’t really all that “upscale,” but they were done the style of Belgian frites, as any regular bistro would serve (though usually holding up a large steak, to be fair.) These fries were a revelation – gloriously salty, golden, and crisp. Our meal was off to a fine start!

As is this entry – too long for just one post. Tune in Friday for the thrilling conclusion – entrees and desserts! You know you want to find out the secret to vegan chocolate cake…

Asparagus Therapy

Asparagus is a fascinating vegetable. Formerly classified as a lily, asparagus is now recognized as its own species – and ranges from the one we’re familiar with, the green (or white, or purple) spears with the tight little leaves, to leafy vines, to covered in thorns. Nutritionally asparagus is a powerhouse, a good source of vitamin B6, calcium, magnesium and zinc, as well as dietary fiber, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, thiamin, riboflavin, rutin, niacin, folic acid, iron, phosphorus, potassium, copper, manganese and selenium. You know, in case you’re low on your rutin. In the spring, there’s no finer vegetable – while asparagus is now available year round thanks to trucks and planes, its true season here in the North is pretty fleeting.

Most people I know steam asparagus – a preparation I enjoy but find a bit dull. This also runs the risk of being unpleasantly mushy if the person steaming isn’t diligent. My preferred preparations are either sauteed with garlic or roasted – this brings out the true sweetness of the vegetable, and the tips get amazingly crunchy and delicate. However, I recently found myself in the position of having two big bunches of asparagus and decided to try something new – asparagus soup!

There are thousands, if not millions, of recipes for asparagus soup out there, but I went with this one because – a. I had all of the necessary ingredients at home and b. it could easily be made vegetarian or vegan if I wanted to make it again (I didn’t make it either, since I used chicken stock in lieu of veggie stock, but you COULD do this. The chicken stock was in the freezer! Besides, I don’t have soy milk, yogurt, or cheese on hand either, so it was all going to be moot.)

You can click the link for the full recipe, but here’s what I did in pictures:

Simmer the asparagus briefly in a bit of stock with some onion. When they’re tender, remove and reserve some of the asparagus tips for garnish later. Try not to steam your fingerprints off.

Put the rest of the veggies in the food processor. Now you are trying to avoid steaming your face off!

Give them a nice whirl, until you have a pretty much entirely pureed batch of green goop.

This was another reason to like this recipe – it didn’t have me pureeing with the liquid. If you lack an immersion blender, as I do, this is a relief.

Back in the pot it goes! Now you’re going to put in all the lemon and yogurt and milk and stock and whatnot. At first this will look unbearably gross, and then you’ll stir it all up and it will become a pleasant, slightly paler green.

When you’re ready to serve it, throw on the tips and some parmesan cheese. If you would like to be extra decadent and have thrown the idea of a vegetarian soup out of the window, why not fry up some lardo and put that on there too? You will not be sorry you did this.

This soup was delicious – creamy and slightly tangy from the yogurt and lemon. And now I have a new, potentially vegan-friendly asparagus recipe in my repertoire!

Livered and Onions

Livered and onions is a phrase my dad made up to express irritation – a play on livid that has always amused me. However, actual liver and onions are far from irritating – I love them! Here’s why:

1. Liver is super good for you – it’s full of vitamins, minerals, and protein that can be hard to get from other sources. You do have to watch out for the cholesterol, but that’s true of meat, period.

2. It’s delicious. Liver is like beef that’s been turned up to 11. Of course, this is exactly why some people don’t like it. To them I say, more for me!

3. It is CHEAP. This is important because I buy my liver at the farmer’s market, where the meat products can, for all the right reasons, trend toward the expensive. They’re expensive because the animals are raised right – treated well, no creepy chemicals, humanely killed – but I still can’t usually afford a $15-$20 steak. Liver, however, is a mere $2-$3per lb – and one pound is MORE than enough liver for several days worth of meals.

After a recent trip to the farmer’s market I took advantage of all of these wonderful attributes and made a very fast, very tasty meal.

I took some asparagus:

and sauteed them with some green garlic:

In the meantime, I rinsed the liver, which was conveniently already sliced:

(The only problem with the preslicing was that I hadn’t realized it had been done – and liver is a bit…messy. The fridge looked like I’d been on a crime spree.)

While I patted the liver dry, I started the onions in a skillet:

Once they’d cooked down, I dredged the liver in a mix of flour, mustard powder, paprika and pepper and popped in the pan that had held the onions:

A few minutes per side was all it took! You definitely don’t want to overcook the liver – it goes from tender to leather pretty quickly.

Put the whole shebang over the asparagus and there you have it – dinner in half an hour!

Cheap, healthy, and local – what’s not to love?