Housewarming Cooking: No Small Fry

Today I continue my series about the food I cooked for our recent housewarming party (photos still forthcoming). If you missed the last two posts on the chicken skewer tower and BBQ pork, you might want to check those out as well.

It is only on very special occasions, maybe two or three times a year, that I bust out my deep fryer. It's not that large or difficult to use, but once you have all of that oil hot, it only seems worthwhile if you're making food for a special occasion. Like for a party. So needless to say, I busted my fryer out for the party and used it to make not one, not two, but three of my party specialties.

The first was homemade corn chips. I filled my fryer to the “max” line, which is about half a gallon, with vegetable oil. I turned it on and set it to 350 degrees and closed the lid. If you're not working with an automatic fryer, but oil in a saucepan, you should have a splatter guard and also a candy thermometer to monitor the temperature and not let it get overheated. For the $20-30 that an automatic one costs, it's still pretty much worth the investment even for these few times a year that I use it. While heating up, I took about sixty small corn tortillas and neatly chopped the stack in half and then into chip-shaped thirds. Once the light went off and the oil was up to temperature, I put about a fifth of my raw chips into the little fryer basket. I dunked the basket, shaking it for several seconds at the beginning to prevent sticking. Then I let the chips go for about a minute and half on each side, until they were just crispy (not bendable but breakable). As I removed them I let them cool and drip onto a drying rack over paper towel and sprinkled a bit of sea salt over them. I repeated this process through a number of batches until I had a nice bowlful of chips that I served with some chunky, fresh salsa at the party. Among all of the food, the crunchy, salty, homemade chips were the first thing to completely go. A fresh corn chip is so far removed in quality and taste from the kind of chips we eat normally that they can be hard to resist.

Next, I made my only contribution to dessert: doughnut holes, easy style. It's a method I saw on the Food Network ages ago and have done for parties to great accord on a number of occasions. I simply buy tubes of pre-packaged pizza dough (like Pillsbury), break off little hunks and roll them into little balls. Each tube made at least thirty doughnuts. In batches, I layered the balls of dough on the frying basket so they weren't touching. Again, when I submerged them, I shook the basket so they didn't stick to each other or the basket. I let these cook for about two minutes on each side, until golden. When I remove each batch I put them right into one of two large paper bags. One paper bag had powdered sugar in it, the other cinnamon and sugar. A batch at a time, I vigorously shook the bag for ten seconds or so. It's awesome: they come out completely coated and looking amazing. They are best when served right away – hot, crispy, doughy, sweet and divine – but a few hours on the counter doesn't mess them up much, just cools them. They were ridiculously good as always. While we gave away most of the leftovers (I made a lot), I kept a few of each kind in my freezer to eat frozen – amazing!

Lastly, I made wontons. Pineapple cream cheese wontons, by making a filling of cream cheese (one tub, whipped), minced scallion (two or three), diced pineapple (one can) and salt and filling little store-bought wonton wrappers (about forty) with little teaspoons. I closed the wrappers with a brush of egg wash. This is a great vegetarian wonton and the flavor combination is great – I modified it from a great wonton we tried at a sushi restaurant in Las Vegas once. I again fried the dumplings in single-layer batches, shaking as I submerged them and letting them cook for a under two minutes on each side until the outside is crispy and golden. I let them drain on the rack after and topped them with a little sea salt. They were very popular – crispy on the outside with an interestingly flavored, creamy inside. I thought I made them too pineappley, but people loved them and they went very quickly.

While I may not use a fryer often, when I do, I like to make it count. I like making dishes people will actually enjoy, not just ones that I fry for the sake of frying. In this case, I was able to knock out three items in under an hour of cooking and while different, they were all immense hits at the party. Definitely ones to keep in mind for next time.

Housewarming Cooking: The Fan Favorite

Today continues my in-depth series about my party food. The pictures of all will be forthcoming once I’ve finished, so stay tuned.

As I alluded to yesterday, the tower of chicken skewers was certainly the chef's favorite at our housewarming party, but the spread went much much further. In fact, the overwhelming FAN favorite was NOT the chicken, it was probably the easiest recipe I made: slow-cooked BBQ pork sandwiches. I got the recipe by tweaking a recipe that I found in a slow cooker cook book. And as my guests raved about the pork, I couldn't stop telling them how easy it was to make.

I started with my crock pot and added a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, a glug of olive oil, and a teaspoon each of salt and pepper at the bottom and mixed it together. This vinaigrette-esque base was my own tweak and it definitely added a tanginess and depth to the overall flavor.

With the slow cooker on low, I then added two pork tenderloins (four pounds) and rolled them around in the base briefly. Then I added three teaspoons of garlic powder and lightly rubbed it on the meat before adding two bottles of barbecue sauce and one and a half bags of frozen, chopped onions that I thawed briefly in the sink. I picked one bottle of smoky barbecue sauce and one bottle of spicy to get a nice interesting flavor. Finally I used my clean hands to gently mix the ingredients among the pork. I put the lid on and left it on low for nearly 8 hours.

When it was ready, I removed the two tenderloins onto my cutting board with a fork, but they wouldn't even come out in single loins anymore. They were so tender that I was literally able to shred them on my board with two forks in only a few seconds. The meat was beautifully moist, well cooked and smelled divine. I transported the shredded meat back to the slow cooker to mix back in with the sauce and onions so it was all completely coated. This got it all sticky and gooey and dripping and tangy and spicy and sweet and hearty and so aromatic and savory – all the things that make most of us swoon over good barbecue. I didn't know I had it in me.

I served the pork on the food table still in the crock pot, on the “keep warm” setting. I laid out some mini buns, sliced, so people could easily make barbecue pork sliders. And they did: many times over, raving along the way. And they took extras home: probably the biggest compliment a chef can get.

Housewarming Cooking: Towering Above

Apologies for the respite. I'm back, and did enough cooking last Friday for our housewarming party to feed a small army. Too bad we only invited half an army. But in all seriousness, the food was fun to make and share, but all the friends and family that showed up really made it special, no matter the food. Over the next few entries, I'll take my time and try to carefully explain the culinary festivities. I won't post the pictures until the end though, so that I can proceed topically as opposed to geographically without giving anything away.

Part 1: Chicken Skewer Tower

I'm engaged to a vegetarian. I don't cook meat all that often. So when I do, I like to make it count. I made three meat dishes for our party, and in their own ways, all brought something festive and special to the event.

This chicken skewer tower was my pride and joy, my own star of the show. I decided early on I wanted to make skewers and then remembered the idea for “towering” them that I had once seen at a Middle Eastern restaurant. My strategy was to build them up vertically in the round by crosshatching the ends of the skewers in the center of my big round serving platter. It was visually pretty stunning and added some much needed height to my display that was able to really draw the guests in.

The chicken itself was a play on a classic wing flavor. To make 40 generous skewers (5+ chunks per skewer) I knifed my way through over 4 pounds of boneless chicken breasts and 2 pounds of boneless chicken thighs (for some dark meat). I tried to make neat pieces that were very much bite sized. I marinated all of the pieces overnight in the fridge in a single bowl, as I wanted the dark meat interspersed with the white.

The marinade itself was simple and I did it on the fly. I used one bottle of onion chili sauce that I bought at the Crystal City farmer's market after sampling it and being quite impressed. It had a subtle “wing” vibe to it but had a very deep flavor that was delicious. I added to this, one Corona beer, the juice of a lemon, a splash of red wine vinegar, a dollop of Dijon mustard and generous pinches of salt and pepper. After mixing the marinade well through all of the chicken, it was completely covering the chicken in my large bowl. I covered with plastic wrap and placed it at the bottom of the fridge overnight.

The next afternoon I soaked my bamboo skewers in cold water for an hour and then carefully removed the marinating chicken from the chill and began carefully threading pieces of chicken onto each skewer so that the pieces were all touching, but left room on the ends of each one. I laid the skewers out on some baking sheets and, two sheets at a time, broiled the skewers for 6 minutes on each side, carefully turning the skewers. The chicken was perfectly cooked after 12 minutes but also incredibly tender and moist. I tried a chunk to see how the marinade did and was floored. It was perfect: a little tangy, a little spicy, full of flavor, and SO MOIST. I couldn't stop eating and ate a full skewer right then and there!

I covered the skewers with foil to keep them warm and let them rest. Then, the hour before the party (along with some of the other hot food I made earlier in the day) I put the skewers back in a 250 degree oven for ten minutes or so, to get the temperature back up. When done, I carefully arranged the skewers on the platter to create my special tower of skewers. It was definitely MY favorite dish, though the fan favorite dish will be coming tomorrow with all the rest. For me, the skewers towered above all else, so I'm selfishly putting them first.

A Note

There will not be any entries this week due to technical and other temporary limitations. Stay tuned next week for the recap of all the food from our Housewarming Party this Friday and much more! Thanks for reading!

~~AF~~

Eggplant Experiment

I've never made baba ghanoush, the delicious Middle Eastern roasted eggplant dish, and I do not know how. But when I was in an experimenting mood recently and found myself drawn to a left over half-eggplant, I decided to wing it and see what kind of appetizer I could produce for Julia and myself.

The first thing I decided to do in order to make my baba ghanoush was roast this eggplant. I had most of a large eggplant – only the top third had been used already – and so I just halved and then quartered what was left. The remaining quarters were the perfect dimensions for the pieces I wanted to roast, so I then just went along each quarter and cut about three-quarter-inch thick chunks.

I wanted the roasting to impart a lot of flavor, so I dry rubbed the eggplant with a mixture of a pinch of kosher salt, a teaspoon of cracked black pepper and a tablespoon each of Middle Eastern spices sumac and za'atar (parts oregano, thyme, marjoram, sesame seeds and a couple other things). I wasn't too exact and upped the amount za'atar I'm pretty sure. Its flavor is so great, it's hard not to use a lot when you're working with it and smelling it. Using my two clean hands, I mixed/rubbed the spices in to my eggplant pieces in a bowl. I placed the eggplant on a baking sheet and then drizzled a little olive oil and red wine vinegar over the spice-encrusted pieces. With the two hands again, I mixed the pieces on the sheet so the oil and vinegar would be evenly distributed. I also halved and deseeded two tomatoes and quickly rubbed the four halves through the remaining spices and oil. I laid out the eggplant and tomato pieces on the sheet in a single layer so none were touching and placed it in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes until the eggplant was crusty on the outside and the tomato soft and roasted.

When the eggplant pieces were roasted, I expected there to be moisture trapped inside, and to my delight, when I broke the crust of one piece, the inside was soft and moist. I almost went ahead and just served the chunks, but I wanted to go ahead with what I started. I dumped the eggplant and tomato into a bowl and added a little more oil and vinegar, probably about two teaspoons of each. I also scooped in about a quarter cup of nonfat Greek yogurt, another pinch of kosher salt and a third of a cup of sesame seeds. I then got my immersion blender and, starting on low, blended the mixture together. I only blended the mixture until it was mostly broken down – I didn't want it to be baby food. The moisture from the inside of the eggplant pieces helped to breakdown all of the elements and blend them nicely.

The consistency and color were great – it really looked like a baba ghanoush, well, a tomato baba ghanoush to be precise, as it was slightly pink. I served it with bread rounds and some feta cheese, and the taste was surprisingly awesome! Maybe not exactly a baba ghanoush but close and then some. Julia and I both thought there was a real zing to the flavor and it tasted deeper and more interesting than many baba ghanoushes out there. I like the sesame flavor matched with the za’atar’s punch, the sumac’s lemony vibe and the creaminess that the yogurt imparted. I was very happy with it, which is good, for as it made at least two cups of baba, we'll be eating it for at least a few more sittings. And I look forward to it. Experiment: success.

Panzanella Audible

Panzanella is one of my favorite dishes to make for others because it is far and away one of the most delicious dishes that I serve. I know they'll love it; who wouldn't love a gorgeous bread salad made just my special way. I was going to impress Julia and her Mom with my traditional version last week, but one of my key ingredients mysteriously went missing: the bread. Without my baguette, I was first forlorn, as I thought panzanella night was lost. But then I had a new idea that would make everything work with just a little twist: bagels.

Has anyone ever made bagel panzanella before? Well, I'm not sure. A Google search revealed exactly zero matches. It makes some sense, but since I'm used to making the salad with small chunks of bread that I toast, dress and toss with the salad, I needed to work out a slightly different game plan. I had three sesame bagels that I sliced in half, and I decided to leave them that large and grill them dry on my grill pan until there was some dark color on each side. Once done I put them all in a bowl and added several tablespoons of good extra virgin olive oil and a similar amount of red wine vinegar. I also added a pinch of sea salt and a large grinding of black pepper. Finally I added about two tablespoons of sesame seeds and a pinch of dried oregano. I thought this little twist would complement the sesame bagels well and give it a little more character. I tossed the warm bagels around in the dressing until they had evenly absorbed most of the dressing. I removed the bagels and plated two halves onto each of our plates.

Normally I would have tossed the bread in the salad greens, but with large bagels, I needed to do it in two steps. Following the bagel dressing, I moved on to the salad itself, adding several cups of baby arugula, two chopped vine tomatoes and half of a red onion to the remaining dressing in the bowl that the bagels had been in. Of course, most of the dressing had been absorbed, so I needed to redress the greens, tomatoes and onions. I made the exact same dressing in a small bowl and redressed the greens, but only lightly.

I covered the bagel “croutons” with large amounts of salad and served the still-yummy sesame bagel panzanella to great reception. It may have been a little harder to eat (fork AND knife), but the bagels were still crunchy and crispy and filled with that amazing flavor of my traditional panzanella croutons. If anything, this actually looked and felt even more like a full meal than the original version. I really liked the addition of the sesame to the flavor and might go forth with that twist. Still, to me, the simplicity of my panzanella is what makes it perfect. A full-bodied vinegar-rich flavor encompassing good bread, good greens, fresh tomatoes and crispy, tangy red onions is all that is needed to make it an awesome dish. No grilled vegetables, no cheese, no egg needed (though I think I've tried all those things since they seem popular in the panzanella world). That pure simplicity is what I crave, so when I want just that, I make it happen, even when I have to call an audible from the original to get it done.

Eggcellent Eggspectations?

The heart of downtown Silver Spring, Maryland is filled with interesting and not-so-interesting places to eat. One of the more enticing come-in-off-the-street joints is Eggspectations, a nouveau take on the Breakfast-all-day theme. In fact, they have a full dinner menu complete with salads, chops, steaks, burgers, sandwiches, and pastas. Many utilize eggs in traditional cooking techniques as well as for garnish, and many are simply nice-looking entrees.

Following this 2-page “regular part” of the menu there starts the breakfast section. This is even lengthier and, well, eggier. There are eggs, crepes, waffles and pancakes in seemingly every combination and style, with cheese or potatoes or potato latkes (the “oy vegg”) or corn beef hash or bacon or steak or chicken (what came first, the chicken or the…?) or jumbo lump crab meat or Hollandaise. The menu, as you can guess, was seemingly endless, with its clever jingle and cheesy linguistic as well as culinary plays on the “egg.” This made deciding on dinner darned difficult, especially amidst a somewhat pushy waitress who decided she needed to rattle off every available beverage (alcoholic and non) when we weren't ready to order the first time. “Do you really have milk? Thanks for telling me that.” As if we needed more confusion amidst this crazy menu.

We decided. Finally. I tried a hybrid between eggy and entree, and since I had been severely in the mood for a burger, found a burger with egg ON it. This was called the Parisienne burger and consisted of a juicy, all-beef patty cooked to a perfect medium rare. It was one of the moister and most flavorful burgers I've had in a while – almost the slightest bit spicy even!. Atop the burger was a melted layer of the delicious, nutty, and aromatic gruyere cheese (one of my favorites), tomato, red onion, lettuce and a perfectly cooked, sliced-up hard-boiled egg. Sounds weird? It was actually awesome! The flavors simply sparkled and exploded. I was a little tepid going in, but it was actually a totally tasty burger. The egg really added something unique to the taste, and it was cooked just right: the white was soft, warm and delicate and the yolk was just-hard and filled with flavor. The egg helped the texture and flavor of the burger, onion and gruyere to meld together and sing.

So was I surprised to have an awesome burger at an egg place? Well, maybe a little, but in a good way. The others ordered eggier dishes like a Benedict with salad, and poached eggs with (“too-greasy”) corn beef hash. Neither was quite as singing as I was, but both thought the eggs were excellent, or should I say eggcellent.

Overall, I definitely liked what I ate but continued to feel that the menu at Eggspectations was so deep and complicated that I couldn't guarantee that I'd find something quite as palette-pleasing the next time. It's very hard to focus there, and that is still my main complaint. So my eggspectation for next time is promising but not entirely confident, as I could have just gotten lucky this time. But maybe their quantity deep menu is equally deep in quality. If so, I'll discover that after another visit or two to Silver Spring, and my eggspectant eggspectation for Eggspectations will be officially eggcellent.

The Ten Dishes I Hate About Food

Self-explanatory. You hear me talk often about foods I like, love, and admire for various reasons. But just like anyone, I do have my pet peeves, my bad list, heck, just the foods I can't stand. I try to be accepting and thus the list is short and random. Nevertheless, today I'll highlight a few of the worst offenders in my Bottom Ten Dishes or Foods.

10. Parsley: This is a very popular herb, but I find the flavor a little soapy and dominant rather than complementary, as herbs should be. I've gotten better with parsley over the years though, as it's almost impossible to avoid.

9. Cooked carrots: I'm not a particularly huge fan of carrot flavor, but when the flavor is concentrated and the texture mushy, it is nearly unbearable to even smell, let alone taste. With sweet glazes, they get even worse, but in good soups, the carrot's awful taste is usually much more masked and tolerable.

8. Potato Salad: This is a case where I find the component ingredient just okay and consider this the most awful employment of the ingredient. Taking usually-undercooked potatoes and dumping a bunch of mayonnaise, mustard and seasonings on it just does not taste good, smell good, look good or have good texture. It's just too raw-tasting to me. No one eats boiled potato sandwiches, but they might as well with the way people go crazy about potato salad. I've been called many foul names for admitting my distaste for this comfort classic.

7. Sloppy Joe's: Speaking of comfort classics, here's something I have never liked. Sweet meat is horrendous. If someone managed to serve me a sloppy Joe that was not over-sugared and over-ketchupped, then I might actually enjoy it. Well-seasoned beef on a bun is called a burger. Just like with tater salad, my distaste for this dish has led to much agog and aghast from Joe-lovers, but this is a culinary compromise I'm never willing to see the other side of.

6. Beets: Just cannot stand them, be they pickled, roasted or raw. I have no clue why, but it's almost like a gag reflex when I see them, smell them or taste them. Enough said.

5. Peanut sauces: One of the main reasons I don't like Thai cuisine all that much is my aversion to peanut sauces and coconut sauces. In fact, I don't much care for sweet-savory applications at all (see: Joe, Sloppy), but I think peanut sauces must be the worst, as soupy, syrupy peanut butter sauce is the last thing I want dousing a good piece of meat or some veggies and rice.

4. Sweet gherkins: I am the self-proclaimed pickle snob. Therefore I need standards. Sweet pickles, most notably sweet gherkins, are the worst-tasting form of pickle I have ever encountered. They don't meet the standards of even the most insidious, jarred, sour dill pickle. There's no comparison and the word pickle should not even be used to describe the former. “Gherkin” has that despicable “k” sound we all love to describe the worst of things – like “icky,” for example.

3. Raw mackerel: I am a major fan of sashimi and nigiri; I eat it several times a week. But I have never tasted anything worse than my experiences with raw mackerel. First of all, it tastes like bad fish: extremely fishy. That's how it's supposed to taste, but I hate it. Second, they often leave a bit of the silvery, raw skin on the mackerel, and it is absolutely disgusting. Give me salmon, tuna, whitefish, yellowtail, but I will never accept a plate of sushi that has mackerel on it, let alone mackerel with skin.

2. Frozen peas and nearly everything containing peas except a good pureed pea soup: I do not like frozen peas. Never have. Never will. That simple. They're mushy, they're grainy and they dominate otherwise good flavors with their pungency. Fresh peas, while rare, are pretty enjoyable but not great. I don’t know what it is about their frozen and more popular cousins, but they aren’t welcome in my house.

1. Celery: As with carrots and peas, celery is fine in many soups (as I can't taste the culprit). But celery is about as useless of a food as I can think of to eat in its raw form. The stringy texture is bad enough, but that murky, pestering flavor is what gets me. If I see celery in any dish or on any plate or platter, it automatically gives me the jeebies. That there must surely be a sign of one of the absolute worst offenders to my personal palette.

Farewell to Wheels

Today: my last ride on the bus that started autoFoodography. The Crystal City metro shuttle that added up to 20 minutes to my commute and countless characters to your cortexes. Following our move, next week my commute will be halved, but I'm hoping I still harness in enough time to haphazardly continue my culinary-literary hijinks. My culinary journey will not end but improve and invariably incite my innovation. My literary drive will never fade into melancholy malaise. And my creative wheels will continue to turn, despite never again happening atop the turning wheels of a bus. So don't fear the retirement of the bus ride lyrics upon my move, get excited for the countless dishes I'll be making in my new kitchen and the restaurants I'll be trying in my new neighborhoods. As for finding the time to construct the words on a severely shortened commute: leave that one to me. If you continue to share your time reading, I'll continue to share my time writing.

A Dip For All Fruits

It's not every day I'm asked to make a fruit platter (with dip). But on the occasion of my future-lil-sister-in-law Erica's high school graduation party, I was honored to have been. The fruit was simple enough of course, as I chopped away at a bunch of honeydew and cantaloupe and arranged them on the platter with a myriad of strawberries, blueberries and Michigan cherries. I even added a little height and character to the platter by taking one of the honeydew rinds and carving an “09” into it (like a pumpkin) and standing it up as a backdrop for the fruit.

It looked pretty so far, but needed a dip to make the fruit have a little more pizzazz. I had a perfect bowl for the dip – my hollowed out half of cantaloupe – and I set to work on the dip by investigating the fridge. I gathered together vanilla yogurt, vanilla extract, honey, pure orange oil (you could just use orange zest) and a lemon. I used about twelve ounces of stirred vanilla yogurt and added a tablespoon of vanilla extract, the juice and zest of half a lemon, a few drops of orange oil (or the zest of half an orange) and two-ish tablespoons of honey. Of course with sweetness and saltiness, I always add to taste and never to blind measurements. I think I went a little over two tablespoons and it was lightly sweet.

I stirred it all together and found it to be a little thin, which led me to try thickening it with a little whipped cream cheese and skim milk, beat into the yogurt mixture. The dip came out fine, but I don't believe the cream cheese added much to the flavor and it didn't even thicken it all that much.

Still, the final product was cool, smooth, tangy and sweet and tasted very nice with all of the fruits. And it looked absolutely fantastic in the cantaloupe bowl I created and centered in the middle of the platter. I think the fruit eaters at the party were pleased by the dip, and I saw many coming back for more. Success, for me, since it came off the top of my head.

The thinness/cream cheese issue left me a little dissatisfied. I think next time I would plan ahead more and strain the yogurt over a paper-towel-lined strainer and bowl overnight in the fridge. This would eliminate much of the water in the yogurt and create a great thickness and concentration of flavor, almost like a soft cheese. That's my vision for next time, but for this time, it still seemed to work quite well.

Stuffed Avocado Creations

One of the more frustrating times to cook can be when you're trying to use up a lot of different ingredients. But I particularly like these times, as I can get creative and innovate a little. This week we're going out of town and next week we're moving, so we're trying to use up perishable (for the former) and non-perishable (for the latter) like they're going out of style. This all led to an extremely tasty dish last night that I made up off the top of my head, with only some stray ingredients as muse. Stuffed avocados.

Well who's ever heard of stuffed avocados? I hadn't, but I had these two ripe avocados and not a whole lot else to base a dinner around. But then I saw we had some leftover black beans, a can of diced tomatoes, some fresh tomatoes, a little bit of red onion…and before long I had the idea in mind.

I halved my avocados as neatly as possible and removed the large pits with a knife. Then I carefully scooped all of the avocado out of each half into a bowl, such that the skins were as clean as possible. I immediately squeezed a stray half lemon over the avocado flesh so it wouldn't brown. Then I added my black beans, a diced fresh tomato and some canned tomatoes, and the remaining eighth of red onion. I also added a large dollop of some tangy salsa verde that we had in the fridge. I added a small pinch of sea salt and pepper and a few swigs of Tabasco sauce and mixed the whole concoction together.

I then sprayed each empty avocado shell with nonfat cooking spray and sprinkled with a little sea salt for flavor. Then I filled each shell very full with the mixture and placed them on a cookie sheet. Lastly I grated a small amount of cheddar cheese that we had left in the fridge over the top of each stuffed avocado. I roasted these in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. When they were done, the cheese was perfectly melted and the stuffing had warmed and cooked together quite nicely.

I used up some remaining corn chips to be the avocado “utensils”/“scoops” and some margarita mix, seltzer, tequila and limes to make some light margarita spritzers. It turned into a nice, light Tex Mex dinner that was very easy to concoct. The flavor of the stuffed avocado was a nice combination of salty, tangy and savory. Julia just loved them and said they reminded her of a fancy, individualized seven-layer dip inside each avocado half. I thought they were quite tasty as well and happy that this new idea came out so well and so smoothly. Plus, I was even happier that I used up so many remaining bits of ingredients in the process.

Farewell, Crystal City

Yes, we are moving away from Crystal City. Well, not far though – to neighboring neighborhood, Pentagon City. So we will not actually be saying good-bye to the many restaurants of Crystal City. Perhaps we'll just not be frequenting them as much. Crystal City is definitely an up-and-coming portion of Arlington, VA and the DC area, but really could use a further infusion of great restaurants and night life attractions. For now, it's a little vanilla for our tastes, but we did have some worthwhile culinary experiences here. But all general complaints aside, with us moving next door, now is a perfect time, in my opinion, to reflect on the restaurants in Crystal City, from good, to mediocre, to mediocre, to mediocre to bad.

~~~~BEST-TO-WORST OF CRYSTAL CITY CULINARY~~~~

McGinty's Public House (near corner of South Glebe Road and Route 1, in with Harris Teeter): The newest restaurant in the area and certainly the best. We can't stop going there, and it is finally bringing the slightest bit of nightlife to the area. The bar is open late and they've had some great nighttime entertainment. Plus, the menu is very unique, the food is delicious and the prices aren't bad. It's simply a very fun place and Crystal needs more like it.

Hamlet Restaurant (North end of Crystal City shops off the CC Metro): Consistently the best place to just go for a relaxing burger and a beer. Great menu has lots of nice options and the service is usually quite friendly. The fries aren't that great, but the burgers are terrific.

Jaleo (Crystal Drive and 23rd Street): Great atmosphere place that serves Spanish tapas and al fresco in the nice weather. The tapas themselves didn't all "pop" but they were still very tasty. This is consistently one of the best places in the area.

Legal Sea Foods (Clark Street and 23rd Street): Great seafood menu with delicious, fresh and creative options. The lobster was fantastic. The lump crab soup is terrific as well. Plus they had great accommodations for the vegetarians, something hard to find in a fish place.

Crystal Bonsai Sushi (23rd Street between Eads and Fern, north side of street): Simple, inexpensive, quality sushi. This combination is not easy to find around here, as I've documented. This isn't the absolute greatest place, as it sometimes shows some of its hole-in-the-wall weaknesses, but in all they have some nice dinner combo specials and are a nice easy place to go for dinner.

Charlie Chiang's Restaurant at Crystal City: This woefully under patronized Chinese restaurant actually has some fantastic Chinese dishes as well as the Mongolian “make your own stir fry” option. I've always loved some of the more creative Chinese dishes on the menu. Very unassuming place, but one I like a lot.

Enjera Eritrean (23rd Street between Eads and Fern, north side of street): The more consistent, tastier, less value and less friendly of the two Ethiopian restaurants on 23rd Street (see below). Hey, the food always wins for me.

La Bettola Italiano (23rd Street between Eads and Fern, south side of street): Cute, little Italian restaurant with great rosemary bread and a nice, classic Italian menu. Nothing special here, but as such a little unknown, it's a fun place to come for a romantic dinner. They seem to be closed a lot, so that sometimes sends us to its competitors.

Cafe Pizzaiolo (23rd Street between Eads and Fern, north side of street): Definitely the best pizza around, but service is a major afterthought. The salads are not good and their very enticing array of gelatos yields gelato that is not very special.

San Antonio Bar & Grill (North end of Crystal City shops off the CC Metro): Decent Mexican food, with very good chips and salsa. Their dishes are usually pretty good and huge but sometimes slightly oddly-conceived (i.e. grilled chicken and quail fajitas, where the chicken is deboned and ready to go for fajita-constructing and the quail still has all of its annoying little bones, making it hardly conducive for fajitas. Things like that annoy me and are commonplace here.)

Don Pablo's Mexican Kitchen (in Target complex on Route 1, past South Glebe Road): Again, decent Mexican food in a chain restaurant. Sometimes the food is pretty good, sometimes it's pretty lame. The $2 beers and $3 margaritas make it all better though most of the time. The fresh corn chips, salsa and tortillas shine, but the rest of the ingredients tend to be quite mediocre.

Harar Mesob (23rd Street between Eads and Fern, south side of street): The less consistent, less tasty, more value and more friendly of the two Ethiopian restaurants on 23rd Street. This one has fallen from previous glory, as it was a few consecutive underwhelming visits here that even led us to try its across-the-street rival. We haven't been back.

Bebo Trattoria [CLOSED] (Crystal Drive near 23rd Street): This over-hyped Italian place from Chef Roberto Donna was a mess when we went there. They had two wait staff for a completely packed dining room, and they were both incredibly rude. The food took forever and then was completely wrong – the waiter then even blamed us for not saying the right order. When the correct food arrived, it was borderline inedible for the vegetarian pizza Julia ordered. The meatballs I got for $18+ were just that – two small, decent meatballs, no pasta or any garnish. Even the olive oil for the bread was basically cooking oil it was so watery; I'm not even sure it was olive, let alone extra virgin. Needless to say, we were neither surprised nor saddened when we saw that this restaurant closed up a few weeks ago. It will be replaced by a Chef Morou (of Next Iron Chef glory) restaurant and we are incredibly excited for THAT to open.

Cafe Italia (23rd Street between Eads and Fern, north side of street): Bland, weird Italian. Mainly classic Italian menu, this place has struck out several times and just always leaves me feeling a little queasy. Plus, the décor is hideous; the décor reminds me of what you’d see at a place featured on Hell’s Kitchen. Let’s hope the kitchen itself isn’t as bad.

Cantina Mexicana (23rd Street between Eads and Fern, north side of street): Less-than-decent Mexican. I can barely remember this place, but what I do remember was not good. Tasteless chorizo. Bad salsa. Non-fresh tortillas. Slimy tomatoes. Poor service. Let's just say, it took me 20 minutes just now to remember the name.

Matsutake Sushi & Steakhouse (Clark Street near 23rd Street): Sparkly Japanese steakhouses and sushi bars in my neighborhood tend to get me excited. This place looks so enticing and has a nice-looking menu. But the combination of incredibly slow service not even including the wait for a backed-up sushi bar (despite very few customers), practically-inedible sushi due to poor craftsmanship and tough cuts of fish, and bad vegetarian sushi, all paired with unexpectedly exorbitant prices doomed this place quickly. It's now the prime example of restaurants we desperately try to avoid.

The Rest: There are lots of other chains like Corner Bakery, Cosi, Quizno's, Subway, Chipotle and Jerry's that we’ve been to occasionally, and several high-end restaurants like Morton's, Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, McCormack & Schmick's and Portofino Restaurant that we haven't patronized yet because of price and/or not having enough vegetarian offerings for Julia. Lack of vegetarian friendliness was also the reason we skipped out on Ted's Montana Grill and Crystal City Sports Pub. All others unmentioned just never met our fancy.

All in all, I give Crystal City a B+ for quantity of restaurants, a B for variety, a B- for restaurant quality, a C+ for uniqueness of restaurants, a D for brunch and lunch and a D+ for shopping and other pre/post-dinner attractions. I still see potential for this area in the next 2-5 years, but right now, Crystal is still searching for the “fun” and “unique” that will definitely put it over the top. Once we move, I'll be just down the street, so I'll still be able to “reap” if and when this area does take off.