Mary Chung Restaurant - 460 Massachusetts Ave.

Hopping off the 1 Bus near Central Square I just didn't have it in me to make a homemade meal, that and a recent power outage wiped out a significant amount of my perishable goods. Strolling down Mass Ave, all the options were laid out in front of me....Pizza, Middle Eastern, Asian, Pub Food, Liquid Dinner (most tempting of all)? Then it dawned on me, how about Chinese? My mind immediately switched gears from what to eat to where I was going to get some quality Chinese take out. I had passed Mary Chung Restaurant a ton of times, but had never even peered through the front window. After closer investigation - large tables of people were still finishing their meals around 9:30pm. A good sign - they were still open and people actually eat there. I peeked at the massive menu and chose 2 of my favorites, Fried Wontons and Spicy Eggplant. 10 minutes and I was on my way. It took every ounce of restraint in my body not to tear open that thick, brown paper bag and pull up a bench with the bums in Central Square, but I would just have made them jealous.....and violent most likely.

When I got home, even the white-hot temperature of the food didn't deter me from getting down to business. The first wonton was nice and crunchy and dipping sauce was a good, sweet compliment. Wait a minute....there's no filling. Maybe it's just this one. Nope. They gave me a bunch of crispy wontons carefully folded into a pocket-type shape filled with absolutely nothing. For $3.50, I expected at least a small ball of cheap pork and scallions, not a box of fried sheets that other restaurants give away free with soup. Strike one Mary.

The spicy eggplant was swimming in a oily pool that would make BP blush and was really over cooked. I'm usually fine with the spiced oil amount as long as it adds flavor and this eggplant really missed the spicy kick that Szechuan cooking is know for. Damn.

A totally unsatisfying meal to be honest. Maybe my expectations were too high, the chef was rushed with a late night order, I ordered the wrong thing, etc., etc. Sorry Mary, maybe next time.......

Fennel is a Flowin'

Fennel bulbs were among the share of vegetables in our most recent CSA share, and what's one to do with fennel?

I had only used fennel  once, in a an apple, pork chop roast that was quite delicious.  After googling fennel recipes and uses, I decided on a rendition of Fennel Rice Soup. Given our 90 degree plus weather here in Boston, why not? I apologize for the lack of photos but Fennel Rice Soup is entirely un photogenic. However, its bland appearance and color scheme doesn't do justice to this powerful flavor.

First I boiled 5 cups of chicken broth with the following:
- 4 crushed garlic cloves
- 1 tsp. crushed peppercorns
- 1 tsp. crushed fennel seeds

While the broth was infusing, I sauteed two diced onions and 2 diced fennel bulbs in some olive oil and then added the barley. Since I was out of white wine I improvised by mixing some leftover stock with a 1/4 cup of champagne vinegar, added the mixture to the rice/onion/fennel and cooked until the liquid was absorbed.

I strained out the seeds (left the garlic though...mmm) and poured the broth in. After a 20 min simmert his pot was ready to go. The infused broth made this light soup taste richer, while the champagne vinegar  provided a lemony taste.

KP

First Foray into Pork Belly

I have eaten pork belly for a while now in a myriad of styles. Smoked and cured, fried crispy, braised slow, served in piping hot soups, I have eaten it in a house, I have eaten it with a mouse, etc, etc. Why has it taken so long to buy a slab and actually cook it for myself? It is a super affordable cut of meat, it's easy to find at any respectable butcher shop, uh.....it's made of pork. What was I thinking? Maybe it was just an unfamiliarity with the cut that made me hedge a bit. So after researching a few recipes, I headed to my local purveyor of meat (Mckinnon's in Davis Square), bought a 1.5lbs rectangle of goodness (it cost less than $3 I think) and set off on my maiden voyage into the land of pork belly.

Peering in my cabinets, I didn't have the exact spices that aforementioned recipes called for, but as usual, I managed. Here's what I did:

First of all, I removed the leathery fat off of the top of the meat, patted it dry and cured the belly for 24 hours in the fridge. This allowed the flavors to penetrate the fat and meat.

I used:

2 tbsp of sugar

1 tbsp salt

1/2 tbsp fresh ground all spice

1/2 tbsp fresh ground coriander

After it spent a night in the box, I concocted a make-shift steamer and covered it tightly with aluminum foil. With a cup of rice wine vinegar keeping the belly moist and flavorful, it hung out in the oven at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. I gave it one quick peek to make sure the liquid hadn't completely evaporated and received a nice vinegar facial for my efforts. Lovely......

The end result was a beautiful thing, but we weren't done yet. I let it rest to get it back to room temp before the next step. In a well oiled grill pan, 6 minutes per side was all it took to reach the perfect level of charred, crisp skin.

Watching it rest again was a torturous process because I knew I was only minutes from the first bite. The smells were right on though and the glistening layers of fat, meat and more fat were pretty as a picture.....see?

I chose to dine on the pork belly slices in a sandwich-style with some cherry-spiked ketchup (simply ketchup and a spoon of good cherry preserves thrown in) and some diced, pickled shallots. Absolute heaven on a bun.

I don't think I'll tinker with the cooking style , but I can't wait to switch up the spice blends and adornments to fancy this up for whoever swings by for dinner.

Picante - 735 Mass Ave.

After a lovely Thursday night filled with a handful of free cocktails, we were in desperate need of food.  I threw out what I thought were admirable suggestions - a quick, cheap dinner over in Chinatown perhaps?  Maybe some sushi, or some Middle Eastern fare at one of Cambridge's finest falafel huts?  One idea was shot down after the next.  Strangely from the beginning, I knew exactly what we were going to end up eating.....it was just a matter of where.  Kate has what some might call an obsession with nachos.  If they are on the menu, she'll order them (or convince others to order with her).  She'll pass it off as doing research to find the best combination of quality chips, mounds of toppings and oozing cheese in the city, but I see right through it.  She likes eating nachos.....'nuff said.

We decided on Picante in Central Square.  It's a nice little Mexican Restaurant a few doors down from the Central Square T stop.  Never being there before, I was very pleased to see some nice seating areas (even though more people at that time were ordering take out), a fresh salsa bar and Pacifico Beer cooling in their fridge.  Kate went for the super nachos with additional grilled mushrooms and zucchini.  I went for the steak burrito.  The burrito was average.   The best part was definitely the warm tortilla, but the filling was a bit too heavy on rice and beans.  The nachos were clearly superior.

The guacamole was creamy and actually tasted of avocados.  The chips seemed homemade as well, which is so much better than 'fresh from the Frito Lay bag' treatment you might get at a number of neighborhood bars.  With the heaps of toppings, it was definitely a filling meal and the veggies made it a great option if you aren't in the mood for meat.  Don't worry all of you carnivores out there, as I'm sure they would happily cover your mountain of nachos with tender, grilled steak or any protein-packed topping you want.

We also tested 5 of their homemade salsa.  So every bite was filled with options......all of them delicious.

From Left to Right:
-Picante Sauce
-A similar version of the picante with more of a vinegar spike
-Chipotle Sauce (probably our favorite)
-Spicy, chunky tomato salsa
-Salsa Fresca (with tons of fresh cilantro)


These sauces alone are enough to for me to give another visit to Picante, order some chips, a cold bottle of Mexican beer and dig in.

-A

Happy Cows

I've toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian lately, mostly because in the past few years I've read mounds of literature on the practices of factory farming and how detrimental factory farmed animals are to our health. While I find it hard to give up meat entirely, I absolutely adore the idea of eating only locally and humanely-raised animals.

Luckily Massachusetts abounds with family run farms providing just that.

Farmers market season started about a month ago here in the Boston area. I came across the Kendall Square market one Wednesday in late May and picked up a few pounds of grass-fed beef short ribs from Springdell Farms. The family farm in Littelton's  "Happy Cows Come From Littleton" sign was a major selling point.

After being on multiple vacations for a few weeks, Adam and I got a chance to make them last week.

Our Sunday dinner also coincided with our first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share of the season from Red Fire Farm, so we went uber local.

We started out with scape pesto on flatbread. Scapes, which are the stalk part of a garlic bulb, are all over the place. They're only available for about a month in the early summer season. Pesto seemed like the best bet. Most scape pesto recipes advise a strait scape, oil, parmesan and nut mixture, but we through in a ton of basil because garlic scapes are strong. Even with basil I still tasted garlic for the next 24 hours.

As a side dish to our main course we used one of the unique items in our CSA share, Kohlrabi. Kohlrabi is a cross between a turnip and a cabbage, and it's sweet, crunchy and delicious. We sliced the sucker up into julienne sized sticks, mixed it with apples cut the same way, and tossed the sticks with a dressing made of yogurt, mustard and seasoning.

Once considered a second-class cut of beef, short ribs are experiencing quite a rise in popularity.  It seems that they are on every menu from pubs to upscale French bistros.  Even though we used the commonplace braising technique that makes the meat so tender and allows the high fat content and bone to make a rich, flavorful sauce, we used some out of place ingredients to make it unique.

The marinade consisted of freshly brewed coffee, honey, tomato paste and oregano (also from the CSA).  Just dipping a finger in and I knew we had a winner.  After browning the meat and deglazing with the marinade, we topped up the pot with beef stock, some chipotle peppers with adobo, then cooked it slow and low for a few hours.  The combination of earthy coffee, rich beef flavor and a spicy tomato kick worked awesome.  Each bite of the short rib was unbelievably juicy because of all the marbling throughout the meat (see above).    

Eating local has never looked and tasted this good.......

- A + K