WBUR Food Blogger Meet-up

I was cruising around Yelp events today and came across this little gem. WBUR is hosting a food blogger meet-up next week at its station on Comm Ave. From what I can gather, it seems like a way to assemble potential bloggers for its Public Radio Kitchen project. Very interesting stuff!

Location details:
Thursday, February 26, 2009, 7:00 PM
WBUR's Studio
890 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215

Playa del Carmen Roundup

I just returned from a week in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. One of the reasons we opted for Playa was that the town was reputed to have good food. Every day, we had tacos of some sort for lunch -- often from a small little stand where the grill is right in front -- those were the best! When we weren't eating tacos, we tried all sorts of places: touristy, off the beaten path, fancy, hole in the wall. Some were hits, some were misses, here are the standouts (for one reason or another!).

Yaxche
On our first night, we went to Yaxche since it offered authentic Mayan cuisine. The food wasn't so hot and like so many places in Playa, the restaurant was next to a construction site (Playa seems to be in a constant state of building and rebuilding). I couldn't decide whether or not my bright green drink looked more like an ecto-cooler or a vegan health drink -- it tasted OK, though. For the rest of the meal, the panuchos (a type of taco) were excellent and Glenn's black stuffed turkey was nothing else if not memorable because of the color.

John Gray's Place
This is restaurant run by a former Ritz-Carlton chef offers solid "New American" cuisine. Service was friendly and the bacon-spinach salad was amazing. One knock against them: the green beans that came with my duck were extremely overcooked. Pricey, but very good food.

Senor Tacombi
It's tacos and smoothies. Served from a converted VW bus! Yeah, it's a gimmick, but it sure was fun. The standouts here were the mango smoothies and the fried fish tacos with red cabbage.

Sur
Right on the main pedestrian strip, sits Sur. An Argentinian steakhouse, Sur boasts open air dining from the second story and fantastic people watching. Hands down, this was our favorite place -- service, ambiance, food, experience. It is pricey, though. We shared meat empanadas to start. Glenn had rib-eye and I had grilled jumbo prawns (I had to remove the heads myself!)

Il Pescatore
Off the beaten path, this small Italian restaurant is run by a Roman hippie who chain-smokes in the restaurant and makes some amazing pasta. On a busier street, the ambiance wasn't perfect, but the food more than makes up for it and prices were very reasonable. We shared gnocchi with black truffle and some amazing fettuccine with bolognese sauce. And it was almost as good as Delfino's in Rozzie.

Eat Your Veggies

Last week at the grocery store, I was looking for some arugula to serve with roasted lemon-pepper shrimp and pasta. I couldn't find any, so opted to pick up some broccoli raab instead. I'm not a fan of regular broccoli, but broccoli raab is OK and I am trying to expand my veggie consumption.

Over the past few days, I had heard several people mention that broccoli was good roasted -- I had never heard of such a thing! Ok, why not?

The net result: crispy florets, intensely flavored and tender stalks. I preferred the florets, Glenn preferred the stalks. I served mine with shrimp and pasta, but this would work well as a side dish for steak.

Roasted Broccoli Raab

• 1 bunch broccoli raab
• 2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
• olive oil
• 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
• salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 400. Remove tough ends of the stalk from the broccoli raab. Toss with chopped garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper. Arrange in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake 15-20 mins until tender, turning 1-2 times with tongs during the cooking. Serves 2-3 as a side dish.

Restaurant Week Is Coming....

The murmurings have been getting progressively louder and more numerous. Boston Restaurant Week is coming. Current plan is for it span 2 weeks and run from March 15-20 and March 22-27. I hate how they don't include that one Saturday night!

The restaurants will be announced in mid-February and you can check out the Unofficial Guide at that time for a list of participating restaurants.

It's a great opportunity to try a new place for a fixed cost and sample what the restaurant has to offer. Working with such a limited number and fully-booked tables gives you a good sense for what the restaurant is capable of -- I've seen some hits and misses over the years.

Hits

• Pigalle -- still holds its charm as one of my favorite places
• Marco -- the first time. Everything was superb!
• Tangierino -- unexpected success, but everyone loved their meal.

Misses

• Marco -- the second time. The menu was pretty boring and they were 45 mins late with our reservation.
• Chez Henri -- meh. I really didn't get the whole French/Cuban combo
• Icarus -- this place seems to be past its prime.

Work in Progress

After hearing about our failed pasta-making experience with the Kitchen Aid mixer, my mom graciously offered me her old metal, manual crank pasta maker. But really, I think she just wanted to clear stuff out of her garage.

Back in 1990 or so, we got this pasta maker and I remember the fun we had as a family making homemade pasta, drying it on broom handles spread across two chairs and eating fresh angel hair pasta with shrimp fra diavlo. After the Kitchen Aid debacle, Glenn was skeptical.

We made the pasta (mostly) following the package instructions for the semolina and then turned our attention to the pasta cranker. Basically, you divvy up the dough into thirds and then crank it through a flattener, progressively thinning the dough the more times you feed it through. Once the dough is thin and plat, the machine gives you the option of cutting it yourself (for lasagna), or feeding it through one of two presses -- one for angel hair, the other for fettuccine. Like the Kitchen Aid, this was a two-man job -- one to feed the dough through, the other to catch the output. It was a fettuccine kind of night! We weren't making a big batch, so we were able to dry ours on the back of the kitchen chairs.


After it had dried for 10-15 mins, we dropped the pasta into boiling, salted water and cooked 3-4 mins until tender. We dressed the fettuccine with olive oil and topped with roasted vegetables (portobella mushrooms, eggplant, onion, red pepper) and some dice mozzarella. The veggies were super easy -- cut into 2" pieces, toss with olive oil, salt & pepper on a baking sheet and roast 20-25 mins at 425.

The veggies were wonderful, the pasta consistency perfect, but the pasta itself needed just a little more flavor. We are still refining our technique, but it's the journey, not the destination that counts, right?