Food Bloggers + Sports Bloggers = Happy Hour
Yes, this is my final reminder – the food and sports blogger March Madness happy hour is Tuesday night (3/16)! Come drink with us from 6-9 pm at Clyde’s of Gallery Place. Just a note – we’ve been moved from the sports room to the oyster bar, but don’t worry. There will still be happy hour-ing. Fellow food and sports bloggers, readers, lurkers, sports fans, food fans, and friends all welcome.
Yes, I realize they look like muffins - but they're actually intended to be brownies.
My brother has always had a thing for bananas. I don’t know what it was about them. I mean, I liked them as a kid, but Alex loved them. One of his favorite snacks to make was a “banana milk shake,” a term that I think my mother came up with to re-brand banana smoothies as something much more indulgent. He was a fan of the banana ice cream they served down the street at Prince Puckler’s, still my favorite ice cream shop in the country. And now that he’s a post-college grad trying to make it as a playwright in Chicago, one of his more bizarre frugal dinners it to make banana omelets. Yes. Bananas. In an omelet.
Okay, so I’m not sold on the banana omelets, although Alex will defend them to the death. But I started thinking about bananas when I was wondering what to get Alex for his birthday. Usually, I’m a pretty boring present giver – I go for the amazon gift certificate, or, once in a while, a book. But I decided to do something different this year – I decided to make him his very own banana baked good recipe.
Now, you’ll notice that the title of this post is for banana “brownies” and yet the photo clearly looks like muffins. But consider this discrepancy merely a deficiency of my kitchen – I actually don’t own a square baking pan, and it just didn’t seem right to bake them in a round pan. Plus, for shipping purposes, the individually packaged muffins are pretty sweet. But, rest assured, while you can bake these in muffin tins, they are intended to be baked in a 9×9 inch square cake pan.
I adapted this recipe from my own banana bread recipe, as well as a butterscotch brownie recipe from The Joy Of Cooking – one of the few sources I could find that had recipes for “brownies” that didn’t actually contain chocolate. Since Alex is such a banana fiend, these are heavy on the fruit – they’re best made with really old bananas that are beginning to blacken on the outside. They’re chewy and moist, sweet with the banana flavor, and punctuated with chunks of chocolate. I used bittersweet chocolate but I’ll actually use milk chocolate when I make these again – the sweetness of the milk chocolate would be a more harmonious compliment to the banana flavor.
So, happy birthday Alex. And yes, I realize that I’m writing this a week after your actual birthday. But, um, can having your very own handmade recipe make up for that?
Oh, and I also ate two.
Restaurants like Churchkey have helped put DC on the food map.
Ever since I came to DC four and a half years ago, the food scene has been expanding and growing right before my very eyes. The new bars and clubs that are opening up on H street, the ever expanding food scene on 14th street – it seems like every day there’s a new restaurant opening that I want to try. But now, I think the DC food scene has finally arrived. Yes – Metrocurean’s sources tell her that we’re getting a DC Top Chef.
Now, I know that Top Chef isn’t the last say on a city’s food scene – not by a long shot. The show’s focus on restaurant cooking really reflects one small part of a city’s food culture, after all – I’d still say that I wish DC had the vibrant ethnic food scene that you find out in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, for instance. But still, I’m pretty damn proud of my little city.
Recipes I want to try, from this week’s Internet perusings:
And in other news:
Happy Friday!
Guinness Cupcakes - perfect for St. Patrick's Day. Or any day.
I’ll admit, I’ve never done that much for St. Patrick’s Day. I mean, my mother would festoon the dining room with green clover garlands and chocolate “gold” pieces around the holiday each year when I was little, given our Irish heritage. And I’ve gone out to a couple of Irish bars on the holiday. And there was that one memorable Saint Patrick’s Day during college at Earl’s on the Ave (the old one) with a bunch of blue drinks and my friend Sara. But let’s not talk about that.
It may be a holiday that has garnered little of my attention, but I think that Saint Patrick’s Day is due for a second look. Not because it celebrates a certain Irish Saint, but because it’s an opportunity to bake with beer.
Everyone should bake with beer. I’m just going to put that out there. Baking with beer is awesome. It adds a smoky, almost savory note to baked goods that’s a lovely compliment to sugar. It’s an excellent addition to bread recipes – just replace the water or liquid called for with an equal amount of beer. And dark beers like stouts or porters go exceptionally well with chocolate.
These Guinness cupcakes with Guinness glaze take advantage of the dark beer/chocolate pairing. The smoky flavor of the Guinness helps balance the sweetness of the cake, and brings out the cocoa in the cake. It also contrasts with the sugar in the glaze, which keeps the cake soft and sweet. The only problem I had with the cake is that it turned out exceptionally moist – maybe even a little gummy in the center. I guess a quest for a perfect cake is never really done. But baking with beer? That’s a quest that I’m happily convinced will never be done – there’s just too many things to experiment with.
Love that you can see the bubbles from the beer in the frosting.
Made with local cheese from the Dupont Circle Farmers Market
Cross posted at Going Green DC.
March can be difficult time at the Farmers market if you’re a baker – you’re already sick of the apples and pears of winter, but it’s too soon for rhubarb season. After this particularly snowy winter, most of us are thinking wistfully of the peaches, cherries and berries that flooded the markets this summer.
But bakers, take note, there’s more at the Farmer’s market than just fresh produce – you can also use the excellent local cheeses in a number of sweet and savory baked goods. If you’re not too tired of apples just yet, you can use a local cheddar cheese in a cheddar pie crust, which is always a great option to spice up apple pie. You can use a local blue cheese in scones, biscuits, or a quickbread. Or, if you’re feeling like dinner, use a local cheese on your pizza, which is what I did this Sunday.
This pizza recipe uses a feta cheese with tomato and basil from Keswick Creamery, a Pennsylvania farm that sells at the Dupont Farmer’s Market. All their cheese is made from raw Jersey milk, and their cows are exclusively grass-fed. Unlike grocery store feta cheese, which can be dry and harsh, this is creamy and tangy, with just a hint of tomato and basil. Because I wanted the flavor of the cheese to stand out, this pizza is simple – topped with just the cheese, fresh basil, and a little olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Feel free to adapt this recipe to your tastes and whims. Pizza with very thinly sliced apples and Havarti could be lovely, as could a cheddar pizza topped with crumbled bacon. A good pizza crust the perfect vehicle for whatever’s in season, making it an excellent recipe to have on hand for the local shopper.
Sometimes you just don't have the right one on hand.
I recently got this question from a friend, and thought that others might be interested in the answer – what to do when your recipe calls for unsweetened chocolate and you only have bitter or semi sweet? It’s a common question for those of us with imperfectly stocked pantries – unsweetened chocolate is one of those things that I rarely have on hand unless I’m planning to make brownies.
So if you’re in a pinch, The Cake Bible rule of thumb is to substitute two ounces of bittersweet/semi sweet chocolate for every ounce of unsweetened, and for every ounce of bitter/semi sweet chocolate used, to remove 2 tablespoons of sugar from the recipe. I recently attended a chocolate tasting at Biagio Chocolates – an event organized by Robyn Webb for DC Foodies Do Good, where I learned that unsweetened chocolate is a combination of cocoa solids and coca butter, whereas semi and bittersweet chocolate is a combo of those two ingredients and sugar. When you’re substituting one for the other, you have to account for the differences in cocoa content, and how the sugar content affects the overall sugar content in of the recipe.
So, there you have it. Are there any other substitutions that people would like to learn, or have questions about?
I would just like to remind you that, eventually, it will be Spring.
Maybe it’s boring to always be talking about the weather. But it’s March. Besides the upcoming Food and Sports Blogger March Madness happy hour on March 16, and maybe St. Patrick’s day, nothing’s really exciting about March. Besides, that is, the onset of Spring. Oh, and the fact that I have now have a ModernDomestic fan page on Facebook. Are you a fan yet?
Spring is taking a really long time to show its face. I’m cold. I’m cranky. I’m tired of shivering in my coat and sweater. I’m ready for something new. Spring, get your ass in gear.
Recipes I want to try:
And in other news:
Happy Friday!
Food bloggers. Sports bloggers. Coming together for a common cause: happy hour.
Yes, we just had a food blogger happy hour yesterday – but did you know that there’s another chance to get together with your favorite bloggers this month?
Join DC’s Food Bloggers and DC Sports Bloggers for a March Madness happy hour on Tuesday, March 16 from 6-9 pm at Clyde’s of Gallery Place in the Sports Room (most easily accessed from the Clyde’s theater entrance). Come meet, drink, and mingle with your favorite food and sports bloggers.
RSVP on the Food Bloggers Facebook page.
Now, I’m especially interested in this event because I actually don’t follow any sports – so I’m wondering how, exactly, I will be able to make conversation with sports bloggers. I’m thinking that I’ll do a little thinking about the best food to eat at sporting events (beer, pretzels) – hopefully that will be our common ground.
Please spread the word to your friends and help us celebrate the opening day of March Madness! Or just come out for the food, beer, and the company.
Many thanks to Jim over at SB Nation, who headed up the planning on this one. And thanks to the Food Bloggers planning committee: Arugula Files, Beer Spotter, Biscuits and Such, Capital Cooking, Capital Spice, Common Man Eats, Dining in DC, Girl Meets Food, Gradually Greener, Thrifty DC Cook, and We Love DC.
Whole wheat sweet potato muffins. Yes, they are sexy.
Whole grain baking isn’t sexy. In fact, when I think of whole grain baking, I think of Eugene, Oregon, where I grew up. Specifically, I think of aging hippies dancing around to drum music, doing yoga before it was cool, wearing patchouli oil, and making their own whole wheat bread.
But Good to the Grain, the new cookbook by Kim Boyce, makes whole grain baking sexy. Her recipes make me actually want tosseek out flours that I never thought I would want to buy. Kamut flour. Spelt flour. Teff flour. They sound so Eugene. So hippie. So unsexy. But Sand cookies? Five grain cream waffles? Soft rye pretzels? I want to go to there.
So far, I’ve tried one recipe from the book for whole wheat sweet potato muffins, but there are many more that I want to try. I’m especially intrigued with Boyce’s whole wheat chocolate chip cookies – the whole wheat flour gives the cookies a nutty taste, and she uses bittersweet chocolate to complement the whole wheat flour. Unlike a lot of cook books, these recipes look really new, and unlike anything I’ve encountered before.
These muffins use a one to one ratio of white flour to whole wheat flour, which keeps them from being too dense. The sweet potato keeps them incredibly moist – in fact, I think I should have baked these a bit longer, as the centers sunk down after I took them out of the oven. I liked how the earthy flavor of the whole wheat flour balanced against the sweetness of the sweet potatoes, although I think that they could have used a bit more depth of flavor. I only added a teaspoon of cinnamon, rather than the tablespoon the recipe calls for, since I didn’t want the cinnamon to overpower the other flavors in the muffins. Next time I might try to add maple syrup or molasses, to make them just a touch sweeter and round out the flavors. Also, since I shop at the crappy Safeway, I wasn’t able to get the Medjool dates called for in the original recipe. I substituted golden raisins instead.
In general, though, I loved these muffins – I loved how moist they were, and I loved how they take a nutty flavor from the whole wheat flour, but a lighter, fluffier texture from the white flour. The spices add interest, and bring out the flavor of the sweet potato. Toasted and spread with a little butter, they’d be a great, healthful, and, dare I say it – even sexy – addition to a breakfast spread.
Look at that fine piece of muffin.
The sticky toffee pudding at Zola is to die for - and yes, that's a sweet potato cake you're looking at.
Restaurant desserts are hard to do well. It’s common for diners to get a plate of something covered in spun sugar and modeled chocolate that looks beautiful, only to be met with disappointment in the first mouthful. But Carrie Anne Hamer, the Pastry Chef at Zola, doesn’t have this problem – her desserts not only look beautiful, but they taste wonderful.
Zola's pastry chef Carri-Anne Hamer.
Hamer has been interested in pastry ever since she got an EZ-Bake oven as a child and could make her mother and father their favorite pies – blueberry and cherry respectively. Originally from Virginia Beach, Hamer studied culinary arts at a vocational program in high school. After a bad restaurant experience at the age of 16 – Hamer says she has a “love hate relationship” with the industry – her career took a detour. She pursued an associate’s degree in business administration and planned on doing a major in international business. But she just couldn’t ignore her love for food. “When I was finished with my associate’s I figured out that my passion lies in the culinary field,” Hamer says. “So I applied to the Culinary Institute of America.”
After moving to DC in 2006, Hamer worked at Restaurant Eve, several different CakeLove locations, and Vinoteca, before moving to Zola in November 2009. Hamer describes Zola’s cuisine as “food that people are familiar with,” re-imagined with high quality ingredients and modern updates. “We have a mac and cheese, but it’s a lobster mac and cheese,” she explained.
The Café au Lait, one of the desserts at Zola.
Hamer’s approach to pastry is creative and spontaneous – “it’s anything that just comes into my head,” she says. “You have all these classic desserts – how can you change them, make them your own?” She brings her classical training to bear in her desserts at Zola, which are elegantly styled updates of traditional European desserts – and yes, they’re delicious.
Take her sticky toffee pudding, which pairs an incredibly moist sweet potato cake covered in toffee sauce with a refreshing butter pecan ice cream. The cake practically melted in my mouth – it was my favorite thing that I tried. The Café au Lait- a coffee mousse with a center of Irish creme, coated in white chocolate and surrounded by a Irish creme sabayon, was surprisingly light and delicately flavored. Her chocolate dessert, called “The Bittersweet Love,” has a bitter chocolate mousse atop a crunchy hazelnut base, filled with a blood orange marmalade and surrounded by a blood orange and vanilla sauce. Unlike many mousse desserts, which can be heavy, this was creamy and light, and the orange marmalade and silky sauce brought out the deep chocolate flavor of the mousse. It’s no wonder that the dessert is Hamer’s favorite – “one of my favorite flavor profiles is chocolate and orange,” she says. “I used to get a chocolate orange in my stocking every Christmas.”
Bittersweet Love, Zola's dessert for Valentine's Day.
Hamer is already thinking of ideas for her spring menu, like a black forest milkshake. “Some ideas come months before the season,” she admits. She’s also thought of doing a dessert for the Cherry Blossom Festival, like a green tea cake filled with a white chocolate mousse, although she’s not sure yet what will end up on the actual Zola menu.
But I’m sure whatever it is, it will be delicious, beautiful, and a sweet way to end a meal.
Can I just say that I'm also a little in love with the retro chic decor at Zola? 'Cause I am.
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