Creationism

Went for a lunch out with some of the gals from work on the first real nice day of the year. Had an impressively inexpensive and tasty meal: a bowl of penne with mussels and tomato sauce with herbs. Decided to try it myself:

Ingredients:

- two pounds of mussels

- several cloves of garlic (I think I used three, maybe four)

- two cans of diced tomatoes (plain; no spices or basil. I'm not sure what the spices in the original recipe were)

- some chicken and red pepper sausage from Trader Joe's (bought it because they gave out samples of it)

- white wine (I used leftover sauvignon blanc)

- olive oil, fresh-ground black pepper, kosher salt, dried oregano or anything else you have that you like in sauce

Heat olive oil in heavy-bottomed pot. Add sausage, cook till it gets nice and brown. Add garlic, cook it up briefly. Add mussels. Pour in a bunch of white wine (maybe 3/4 cup?) Put the lid on the pot and let the mussels cook till they open. Take out any that didn't open up all the way. Add the cans of tomatoes and the juice. Also add some kosher salt, fresh-ground black pepper, and dried oregano. Put lid back on for a little while and let it all cook. Decide it's too watery, take lid off to let it cook down a bit. It's ready when the tomatoes are cooked through and you're too hungry to wait anymore (about 15 minutes after adding the tomatoes). Oh yeah, you should have had some pasta cooking in a separate pot while you were doing all this. Serve mussels and tomato mixture over pasta. Enjoy.

Early Bird Special

One more post from Florida.

So there's this pizza place my cousin heard about, this one that has an old organ in it. From the 1920s. This place is supposed to have really good pizza. And oh yeah. It's in Florida.

I'm not sure which part of all of that didn't give us a clue that we were going to be the youngest people there. By a LOT.

It's called (warning: organ music ahead) Roaring 20's, "Pizza and Pipes." We figured we would go there for dinner one day since we were in the area. After doing some outlet shopping and visiting an actual old plantation (sugar), we figured we'd just get there early and wait. So we pull in, and not only is there a line (see above), but I look to the right and see a bunch of people still waiting in their cars. Look to the left -- same thing. They don't open until 5 p.m. Did I mention the photo above was taken at 4:32 p.m.? And that was after I composed myself enough to take out my camera.

All in all, it was pretty cool. Good pizza; cheap, cold beer; and awesome ambience. Yes, there's an organ, and a guy who plays it. (And yes, he played "Take Me Out To The Ballgame.") Yes, there are souvenirs (CDs, postcards, and even rulers). So it now replaces Dish as my current "I should bring this idea home with me and open one of these" dining experiences from Florida.

And yes, we did get hit on as we left the restaurant. There was still a line out the door, and we walked out, one frisky old gent called out to us, "Hey, leaving so soon?!"

Flo-rida

This Eat More Nutmeg dispatch comes to you from the Sunshine State, where I am visiting my cousin.

Food-wise, this trip to Florida is a little disappointing: I fear it's too warm to eat oysters without worrying about my gastrointestinal health, and Dish appears to be gone.

But while I was able to restrain myself from doing the Northerner-in-the-South thing and demand a trip to Sonic for the sweet treats that damn fool couple in all the commercials rave about, instead we went to Chick-Fil-A. I had heard about Chick-Fil-A but never ate there before, despite repeated trips to the South and a love of all things chickeney and fried.

Chick-Fil-A, where have you been all my life? And when are you going to expand to the area between New Jersey and Boston? (And I don't mean the Weinstein Food Court at NYU. That one doesn't count.) I promise, I'll never go to McDonald's again. Promise.

Mac and cheese for grownups

Mmm ... risotto.

I know what you're thinking, "risotto," oh puh-leeze. But I'm not just being snooty, I'm getting in touch with my heritage. When my grandmother was a little girl in Italy she went to work with her mother in the rice fields. I've seen photos.

So anyway, it's now one of my favorite foods and one which I'm proud to be able to make. I think I must have inherited my forebears' hardy spoon-mixing wrists, so if you're prone to carpal tunnel disease, kids, don't try this at home. But if you'd like the comfort-foodiness of some Kraft Cheese and Macaroni but want the agony and ecstasy of standing at a hot stove for 40 minutes to prepare a meal that people think is "hard," have at it:

"More Risotto and Cheese, Please!"
6 tsp olive oil
2 cups Arborio rice
1 cup white wine
One box and a can or two of chicken broth
1/2 to 1 cup parmesan cheese (adjust to your taste and lactose tolerance)
4 tbsp butter
a little bit of parsley, for color
salt & pepper to taste *

Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (I like using my new cast iron dutch oven, but if I halve it I use a regular old Farberware saucepan). Heat the chicken broth in a separate saucepan. Add rice to the oil saucepan and cook, stirring (I use a wooden spoon), for 5 minutes or so; until the rice starts to--for real--sound like glass beads clicking together. Carefully add the wine and stir. When the wine looks like it's all absorbed, start adding hot broth to the rice a ladleful or two at a time. When the spoon leaves a trail in the rice, add more broth. Keep doing this and keep stirring until the rice is all done, about 25 minutes or so. Keep stirring. Add butter, parsley and cheese, salt & pepper to taste. Stir it up a little more. Serve hot all lumped up in a bowl.
Calories: a lot
Servings: a lot


* you may note there are no onions. Often these dishes will start off with onions. I dislike onions.

"That's so last month"

Here are the things I debuted as "my latest focuses" for the past month or so since I started this blog. This item, along the right margin of the blog, is a listing of all the things I'm enjoying, food-wise, at the present time.

I'm soooo over crushing garlic with the side of a big knife.

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2008:
- Fish on Fridays during Lent
-"This Fig Walks Into A Bar" bars from Trader Joe's (they're like big Fig Newtons!)
-crushing garlic with the side of a big knife
-decaffeinated Lady Grey tea
-my new aqua cast iron pot
-sauvignon blanc wine from New Zealand and Chile

Happy Easter

We like obnoxious food, apparently

A lot of these are about food:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/

Good local oysters

While on a recent visit to the Ocean State, I ate at this cute restaurant, Scales & Shells, on Thames Street in Newport and treated myself on a cold, cold March evening to some oysters. I was told they were Matunuck oysters, and as such, I assume they came from the Matunuck Oyster Farm in Peace Dale, R.I.

Anyway, these oysters were super tasty and fresh and I just wanted to give them a little shout-out because I think it's awesome that someone semi-locally is farming shellfish that I will presumably be able to eat lots more of.

Oysters aren't just awesome to eat, though. They do a pretty damn good job of cleaning water. For instance, they can help take care of excess nitrogen in wastewater, something that many municipalities spend millions to remove. Not that you'd want to eat the oysters that have done that, but still ... Read more (login required): In City Waters, Beds (and a Job) for Oysters, from the New York Times, Feb. 24.

I'm Lovin It

When a girl who's 1/16 Irish is deciding what to eat for dinner on St. Patrick's Day, what does she choose?

Why, a Shamrock Shake from McDonald's, of course!

I have loved these things since I was a little kid. One year, when I was probably 10, I poured Shamrock Shake into Dixie cups and froze them to savor out of season. It worked. So awesome.



Back in June, I had a minty-chocolate shake at McDonald's. An entry in Wikipedia tells me this was called the "Minty Mudbath" shake and was a promotion in conjunction with the movie "Shrek the Third." (uh, because it's green, I guess. No word on whether Shrek actually tastes minty or chocolatey.) It was merely OK.

A couple of years ago, though, while licking Vanilla Mint ChapStick off of my lips, I figured out that Shamrock Shakes were really just vanilla milkshakes with green dye and mint flavor added. It was kind of disappointing, but also really liberating. It almost makes me not want to freeze some.

The Wikipedia entry also says that Shamrock Shakes are available year-round in Ireland, but I am not sure if this is bad reporting based on a 1997 report: "Sinn Fein Leaders Demand Year-Round Shamrock Shake Availability."

Another Irish food with a beverage in the title

Best Irish soda bread recipe? Ina Garten's.