Sunday Dinner

My culinary spring break is a weekend old and I’m already starting to feel a little chubby. In the battle for my belly so far, eating in restaurants has a slight one hour lead (3-2) over time spent in the gym.

Eating at the Little Owl on Saturday went very well. Our table of four decided to split a plate of meatball sliders as an amuse bouche and then dove into our meal. This was my third time dining there and if there was any doubt before, I now know that the ideal meal would be the duck breast appetizer followed by “The Pork Chop.” I look forward to going back.

I tried making a couple of new things for dinner last night in preparation for a possible dinner party in late April. The first was a squid and heirloom tomato bruschetta over grilled French bread. I tried to pay close attention to the textures, with the hope that the crunchiness of the bread would cancel out some of the chewiness of the squid. I'm convinced heirloom tomatoes can make anything taste good and this was no exception.



The second dish I tried was a saffron, lemon monkfish over roasted peppers and corn. It wasn’t bad but could’ve used a sauce for some extra acidity and maybe something green as well.


For dessert I wanted to make something simple and light. Last week we bought some thin mint girl scout cookies (it’s impossible not to buy girl scout cookies when they’re available) and have been seeing them in the freezer. My mom always keeps things like this these freezer—a brilliant way to maximize their crispiness and to keep the chocolate un-melty. I thought it would be fun to use the cookies in a dessert.

Here’s what I came up with:




Macerated strawberries, vanilla whipped cream and crushed thin mints. It was simple, relatively light and I got to use thin mints!



Going to Blaue Gans for lunch today.

Links:


A very amusing article on eating Capybara, the largest rodent in the world. Despite the passage “Never mind that capybaras have some unusual habits like eating their own feces. And yes, some chefs acknowledge, the methods used to kill capybaras, normally involving a sharp clubbing of the rodent’s head, put off some diners.” I still kind of want to give it a try.


Great. Just great. Adam Platt reviews Momofuku Ssam bar, meaning I’ll have to wait even longer when I go on Tuesday and Wednesday and maybe even Friday this week…