Hawthorne Lane: Take TWO

Last week, I took Karen out to celebrate her birthday. Since it was a "school night", I thought that it would be nice to go somewhere interesting, fun, and low key. So, I decided to take Karen to TWO. Located in the space once occupied by the restaurant Hawthorne Lane, TWO was born out of chef/owner David Gingrass' desire to reinvent his restaurant to have a hipper and more casual atmosphere. We had the opportunity to visit Hawthorne Lane twice before it closed, the last time for its final cooking class.

While Karen had already been to TWO once before for lunch, I had not visited since our cooking class. While there were some differences in the decor, notably the wall panels and the lighting fixtures, the place still seemed to be quite similar to its previous incarnation.

Soon after we were seated, we were pleased to be presented with their starter plate of flatbread and biscuits. The flatbread was deliciously cheesy with a hint of heat and the biscuits were flaky and wonderfully buttery.


After a round of drinks (Karen ordered a mojito and I got a glass of Gloria Ferrer sparkling wine), we were ready to order dinner. We started out with a decadent appetizer, slow-roasted marrow bones served with crusty bread and caramelized onions. There was the perfect amount of marrow in the order: one bone for each of us with enough marrow to spread over the toasted bread. Despite the richness of the marrow, there was just the right amount so that we didn't feel overly sated by the starter before our main courses.


Since we were both pretty hungry, we decided to order a couple of entrées which we split. The first main course was braised beef cheeks with gaufrette potatoes, maple glaze, and horseradish crème fraîche. The beef was really flavorful and fall-apart tender and went very well with the horseradish. The maple glaze was interesting, having a slight hint of port, but was perhaps a touch sweet for my taste. Nevertheless, this was an excellent dish.


Our second main dish was a pan-fried pork cutlet, which could be prepared in two different ways. We could have ordered it with broccoli rabe and lemon, but opted to have it with spicy marinara and aged provolone cheese. The huge cutlet was deliciously tender and not at all greasy. With the marinara and cheese, it was reminiscent of a veal parmesan. It was another fine dish, though given the heaviness of the marrow and beef cheeks, it would have been more prudent to go with the lemon and rabe option.


For our side, we continued with the rich food theme and ordered some truffled macaroni and cheese. I enjoyed the mac and cheese, though the truffled flavor was a bit too strong for Karen's liking. I am curious if they used real truffle oil or something that came out of a laboratory.


Though we were getting quite full, it was, after all, Karen's birthday, so we ended the meal by sharing a decadent dessert, their signature "TWO Chocolates" mousse cake. The dessert consisted of semisweet and milk chocolate mousses, devil’s food cake, and caramel rice krispies. It was wonderfully rich and delicious. Even though I'm not a dessert guy, I'd definitely order it the next time I'm there.


So, there you have it, a fabulous birthday meal. I was a bit disappointed that they didn't do anything special for Karen, as per my OpenTable request, but the food was great and the service was prompt and attentive, so we really can't complain too much.

Ratatouille!

I'm not talking about the movie, but rather the dish! My wonderful girlfriend surprised me last Friday evening by preparing this simple, but tasty French recipe for dinner. Karen opted to go with a quick version of the recipe with poultry sausage. She spent a good part of the afternoon shopping for ingredients and dicing vegetables, which included red bell pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, Japanese eggplant, tomatoes, onions, and garlic. In lieu of a hot pepper, Karen used a spicy turkey sausage with cilantro.

The recipe was very fast and easy to make. First, she sauteed minced garlic in olive oil for a few minutes. Then, she added in all of the vegetables except for the tomato and continued to saute the mixture until it began to soften, perhaps about 7-8 minutes longer. Then, she mixed in the diced tomatoes and cooked it for an additional 3-4 minutes. Finally, she put in the sliced sausage, and the chopped basil and parsley, and cooked the mixture until the sausage was warmed through, which took another 4-5 minutes.

To accompany the dish, Karen prepared some purple cauliflower that she had picked up at the Old Oakland Farmer's Market. She cut cut up the head into small florets, tossed them with some light olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted them in the oven while we were preparing the ratatouille on the stovetop. The cauliflower was done just as the ratatouille was ready.

The results were fabulous. The ratatouille was colorful and delicious. The roasted cauliflower was crunchy and contrasted nicely with the colors and textures of flavorful vegetables in the ratatouille. This dinner combination was definitely a winner and something that we will make again (hopefully soon).

The Menu - Revealed

Last week, I wrote about a menu that I created for Karen for our first home-cooked meal together. At the end of that post, I posed a few questions about the menu for you readers out there. Due to popular demand, here are the answers to those questions:

Our first dinner: Oven Roasted Chicken and Cheesy Grilled Polenta
I was a bit disappointed with my polenta as I didn't allow the grill to get hot enough before I threw on the slices of polenta. The result: very sad-looking grill marks. As Karen says, it's not grilled food without the marks. My bad. I have since done a better job with grilled food items.

Dishes that I had never made before: Maryland Crab Cakes, Cheese Filled Triangles, and Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Nope, no entrees, just a couple of the appetizers and one of the sides. If I would have known how easy it is to make the crab cakes, I would have made them earlier.

Dishes that I have yet to make for Karen: Grilled Garlic Cilantro Sea Bass and Smoked Standing Rib Roast
I haven't made the former due to the depletion of the population; okay, that along with the price and availability of the fish, but given that Whole Foods is carrying it once again (albeit for a pretty penny), I may give this dish another try or use a different type of fish, such as halibut. I haven't made the latter because of the amount of food that I would prepare. Perhaps it's time for a dinner party so that we can enjoy a nice smoked prime rib. Mmmmm....

Guest Blogging: Party with Paella

Tonight, Karen writes about our most recent cooking experiment: paella.

Growing up, I never celebrated Christmas or waited for Santa Claus to come down the chimney bearing gifts (instead I partied with Hanukkah Harry over eight glorious nights). Late December wouldn’t mean much for me if not for the unique New Year’s Eve celebration cooked up by my parents.

It all started innocently enough. When my brothers and I were young, my parents went out and celebrated New Year’s Eve in the traditional manner. They hated it. Paying exorbitant prices for the same entertainment they could get on any normal night of the year, worrying about drunk drivers, and leaving the kids back home was not their style. So they decided to defy tradition and do up New Year’s Eve their way.

And thus was born the New Year’s Eve family feast. Meals generally started around 7ish and the final course never finished before midnight. Dick Clark was often on in the background and the menu was always gut busting. Hors d'oeuvres were varied and plentiful and included rumaki, cheese, chips, artichoke dip, spareribs, and cheese puffs. The appetizer was usually shrimp cocktail (with homemade cocktail sauce). Paella stole the show as the main course (although in later years Beef Wellington was sometimes served). Without fail, dessert was a layered parfait of fruit, whip cream, and nuts. In true celebratory fashion, sparkling wine was free flowing for all. In our younger days we were served the sweet goodness of Asti Spumanti (until we grew up and learned to appreciate finer champagne).

Thanks to the New Year’s festivities, paella holds a special place in my heart. So it came as little surprise that among the gifts my parents brought from a recent visit to Spain was the Spanish Bar and Restaurant Cooking cookbook full of paella, tapas, and sangria recipes. Taking the hint, Loren and I decided we should get down to business and cook up a storm.

We decided on a paella mixta (mixed seafood, sausage, and chicken) with serrano ham added in for good measure. The recipe was fairly extensive and included clams, garlic, onions, tomato, red pepper, olive oil, chicken, paprika, rosemary, thyme, cumin, rice, chicken broth, saffron, chorizo, shrimp, and capers. We seasoned and browned the chicken as well as the garlic, onions, tomato, and pepper. Then we sautéed the rice, added the chicken broth, and sprinkled in the saffron. Here was our first mistake - we used saffron threads but did not steep them first. As a result, the paella never got that deep yellow color we were expecting.

Next we were to transfer the rice into a paella pan (which we didn’t have) and mix in all the other ingredients. I don’t think we were prepared for the massive quantity of food resulting from the recipe but did the best to distribute among the closest paella type pans we did have. We then baked the paella in a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven and waited. Here was mistake number two - we needed to bake the paella far longer than the recipe indicated (probably because we were using two pans). Initially the rice seemed hard and as if it would never fully cook. But our patience was eventually rewarded and we took the paella out to finish on a high heat on top of the stove to crisp up the rice and create the socarrat - the crisp, caramelized, golden rice that sticks to the base and sides of the pan. In attempting to create this toasty goodness we made our last mistake - the aroma of toasted rice coming from the pan signals a socarrat has been achieved. The point between socarrat and burn is slim, we ignored the smell and left the pan on high heat a touch too long. The rice and paella were still edible but just not perfect.

Here in all glory is our first attempt at paella. While no new traditions have yet to be born, I am sure we’ll be trying this again soon.



Posted by Karen

The Menu

When Karen and I first started dating a few years back, one of the first things that I wanted to do was to prepare a home cooked meal for her. Knowing that she is also a foodie, I thought that it might be more fun to have her select what she wanted for dinner. So, I created a dinner menu, from which she could select the dishes of her choosing. Here were her choices:

Appetizers

Maryland Crab Cakes
With a side of homemade aioli
Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts
Marinated in soy sauce and rolled in sugar
Florentine Artichoke Dip
Served hot with crusty French bread
Cheese Filled Triangles
Spinach and cream cheese filled phyllo triangles

Entrees

Grilled Rib Eye
Rubbed with Montreal seasoning and seared on the grill
Baby Back Pork Ribs
Cured with a spice rub and glazed with homemade barbecue sauce
Thai Coconut Curry Chicken
In a spicy green chili sauce over steamed jasmine rice
Oven Roasted Chicken
Smothered with a lemon zest garlic pepper paste
Jamaican Jerk Pork Tenderloin
Marinated in a spicy habenero paste and grilled
Smoked Standing Rib Roast
Infused with garlic silvers and slow smoked over hickory
Barbecue Pulled Pork
Slow cooked for ten hours in a hearty homemade sauce
Smoked Chicken
Hot smoked with hickory wood
Grilled Garlic Cilantro Sea Bass
Chilean sea bass marinated in an Asian-style sauce
Home Style Meat Loaf
With a honey tomato glaze

Sides

Sesame Garlic Asparagus
Grilled Zucchini and Yellow Squash
Scalloped Potatoes
Cheesy Grilled Polenta
Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Wild Rice and Sausage Casserole
Baked Squash

Dessert

Dessert of the day

To make it more interesting, I put a few dishes on the menu that I had never previously made and that I would make for the first time for her dinner, if said dishes were selected. (Of course, I didn't tell her which ones they were.)

In the past few years, I have made all of these dishes for her, save two. Do you know which ones they are? Also, can you guess which dishes are the ones that I had not made prior to the creation of the menu? Finally, can you guess what I did make for her for dinner?

Guest Blogging: Karen's Analysis of the FFT Readers

Tonight, I'm going to put aside the keyboard to allow Karen to share some of her thoughts. Take it away, sweetie!

How'd You Get Here?

Did You Know: Food for Thought gets more hits from Google searches related to Fred Steak, Real Men of Genius, the Testicle Festival, and the nutritional value of food (generally sushi and Johnsonville Brats) than anything else?

For almost a year now, Food for Thought has been a personal labor of love consistently read by a relatively small group of friends and family. But in recent weeks, traffic to the site has been inching its way upward and Loren has been getting pretty excited. Being a Web 2.0 guy, he’s happy to see his work shared with a broader community. People have been coming from all over the world and getting here in the most interesting ways. I know because Loren (on more than one occasion) has shared his sitemeter statistics with me. While the numbers are nothing compared to the big blogs out there, I think the findings are worthy of note and would like to share some of my favorites.

Before we get started, let me stress again that Loren is thrilled by everyone who comes to visit his blog. The views presented here are mine only. Please don’t take any offense if you happen to see one of your own search terms listed; I am noting it because it was either entertaining or thought-provoking in some way. Come back often!

First, a look at the demographics of Food for Thought readers (from recent statistics):
The majority of readers (82%) come from the US. No big surprise there. But also represented are Australia, the Philippines, Austria, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom, Singapore, Indonesia, China, and the infamous Unknown Country. I know there are German readers out there too - not sure why you guys are getting slighted.

Lots of folks come into the site either through referring URLs (Food Wishes, Carleton, etc.) or personal bookmarks. But as mentioned above, many also come in as the result of various searches. Examples include:

• Testicle Festival
  
  Search terms have included: testicle festival utah, testicle festival woodruff, black gold festival 2007 woodruff. Similar searches result in links to the post about the festival at Mama's Place.
  


• Real Men of Genius
  
  Search terms include: bud light real men of genius, bud light present real men of genius, real men of genius boneless buffalo wings inventor.
  


• Food Nutritional Value
  
  Search terms have included: unfiltered sake calories, calories in unagi don, compare calories in baby back ribs and fish, calories in johnsonville brats. Links are taken to the July 2006 and August 2006 archives (among other places).
  


• Fred Steak
  
  Search terms have included: freds marinade, freds steak marinade, fred’s steak recipe, fred steak.
  

Beer can chicken and cherry picking are also starting to pick up popularity due to recent posts. And math pie/cosahedron/mathematical baking has also popped up more than you might think. Other intriguing searches include: quadruple BK stacker, taco in a bag, wild hotdish, loren cook "grill" (from China no less), and mmmm.

There are too many searches to even begin to mention (and the history only goes back so far). My, until very recently, all time personal favorite (and perhaps the most humorous search getting to Food for Thought) is: massage happy ending boulder co

But a new front runner has taken its place. Thanks to a searcher in New Jersey with ideals similar to mine, "beets nausea" can take its rightful place in the pantheon of Food for Thought Searches. And that lucky reader ended up reading a lovely story.

Let’s see what you come up with next!

Posted by Karen