Category Archives: Restaurants
French Fridays with Dorie: Chunky Beets and Icy Red Onions
I’ve been on vacation this week, touring D.C. I think I did more in 4 days than some people might do in a week or more (travelogue coming early next week). Yesterday, we landed at my sister Jane’s house in Maryland for a weekend of visiting before heading home.
Jane arranged to have all the ingredients on hand for this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Chunky Beets and Icy Red Onions, so I wouldn’t have to miss a post. Also, she, like me, adores a good beet salad. It was also a little bit selfish, but in a good way.
Beet salad is a favorite of mine. I have several in my repertoire, and hoped to find a new favorite in this recipe. We roasted the beets, because I think they taste best that way. The roasting caramelizes the sugar in the beets, giving an earthy sweetness to the beets that I enjoy. I’m not really a fan of raw onions, but, for this recipe, the onions are briefly soaked in water, and then you change the bathwater, and soak them further with water and ice. This treatment dramatically softened the sharp taste of the onions while keeping the onions crisp. For herbs, we added Dorie’s preferred oregano, plucked from Jane’s herbs outside. Finally, we crumbled some goat cheese into the salad.
Jane, Howard, and I all agreed on the final verdict. This beet salad was passable, but nothing special. The vinaigrette lacked the bite we all prefer (we thought it needed a lot more mustard). So, while we’ll finish this up over the course of the weekend, I’m not sure it earns a place in my beet salad rotation. Here’s a link to my favorite version of beet salad.
By the way, we had an excellent food day today. We had lunch at the very edgy restaurant Volt in downtown Frederick. It was a delicious and very creative meal in a striking setting. We ended the meal with a tour of the kitchen, which was fun. Dinner was at the opposite end of the sophistication scale. We ate burgers, fries, and shakes on the picnic tables outside Freez King, also in Frederick. Yum! And, I got to ride to dinner on the back of my brother-in-law Danny’s Harley, only the second motorcycle ride in my life. It was a thrill.
Other participating bloggers will also share their thoughts on the same recipe. You can find links to their posts at the LYL for this recipe at French Fridays with Dorie.
Restaurant Week Review: AKA Bistro (Again)
Last week and this week are Boston’s winter Restaurant Weeks. There will be another one in the summer. We always try to take advantage of the occasion to either revisit a favorite place or try somewhere new.
Last week, we revisited a new favorite, AKA Bistro, where we went for my birthday dinner in December. AKA Bistro has both a French and a Japanese menu. On our first visit, we both stuck to the French menu. The Restaurant Week menu featured items from both the French and Japanese menus, so Howard went with Japanese selections and I went with French.
Howard started his meal with Hokkigai (Surf Clam) Ceviche with tomato, orange and jalapeño. It was interesting. The clam was diced into small pieces and served in a citrusy broth. There was some clam in every bite. For his main course, he picked the Sashimi Platter. There were five different fishes, and each one offered its own innovative topping. There was salmon, fluke, branzino, yellowfin tuna and something else we can’t remember. It didn’t look like a huge portion, but turned out to be quite filling.
For my meal, I started with a salade de betteraves et fromage de chèvre frais (roasted beet salad with fresh goat cheese). I love beets to begin with. This salad was amazing. The beets were chopped coarsely with cornichons, mixed with vinaigrette and packed into a tuna-fish-can shape. I’m definitely going to have to try to recreate this at home. For my entrée, I had truite en persillade, pomme galette, citron et ratatouille (rainbow trout with pomme galette, lemon zest and ratatouille). Trout is one of my favorite kinds of fish, and we’ve been having a hard time finding it in the store for home-cooking. I tend to order it when I see it offered on a restaurant menu. The trout didn’t disappoint.
We both enjoyed our meals, and the tastes we had of each other’s, but I preferred the French.
For dessert, I ordered the crème brulee and Howard the chocolate mousse. It was funny. When the plates were served, they looked familiar. We had each ordered the same desserts when we were there for my birthday!
One thing I have to say about this restaurant, which is definitely a new favorite, is that they know how to serve tea properly. I am a tea drinker, but most restaurants do a very poor job of serving tea. I often don’t order anything to drink with dessert because of it. At AKA, you are served a pot of hot tea, freshly brewed from loose tea leaves. The pot is large enough for more than one cup, and it is very good quality tea. Kudos!
Later this week, we’ll be eating at L’Andana in Burlington.
A Plateful of Happiness 