Wisconsin

You know your roommate is from Wisconsin when he gets back from a business trip to his home state and you find bags of cheese curds all over the kitchen counter.

Artisanal birthday desserts, Brooklyn style

Locally made, artisanal desserts at my nephew Ariel's Brooklyn birthday party included cup cakes and a firetruck cake almost too intricate to eat (well, Ari didn't seem to mind carving it up!).

Christmas in August

I'm still not sure why my friends Susie and Andi hosted Christmas dinner in August (something about enjoying the holiday sans "the bother of capitalist appropriation"), or for that matter, why "dinner" commenced at 3 p.m. EST. I am sure that it was the most regal feast I've enjoyed since starting graduate school in D.C., where I've mainly subsisted on canned Goya products from the Panam Latin grocery on 14th Street NW.

There was Susie's pumpkin soup, hot, smooth and gingery, served with croutons and a glass of refreshingly cool, creamy, nutmeg-sprinkled eggnog.


There was pork tenderloin, peppercorned by the good people of Trader Joe's, sliced and served beside peas; mashed russet potatoes with roasted garlic, milk and Italian seasonings; and a robust vegetarian lasagna, constructed of home-roasted red peppers, stewed tomatoes, zucchini, sauteed baby bella mushrooms, spinach and fresh garlic, and basil grown on a windowsill in Columbia Heights.

Sadly, I only had time to pick up a baguette and some frosted cupcakes from the Whole Foods on P Street, indisputably lame contributions. Fortunately, Stephanie, another guest, was more ambitious. She rolled in with quinoa, the hippest grain around, mixed with kale, roasted shallots and halved cherry tomatoes, and seasoned with brown sugar because, she explained, "it's Christmas."




The mashed sweet potatoes side, fortified with eggs and gussied up with vanilla extract, butter, milk and (of course) brown sugar, and covered in chopped pecans, was plenty sweet. But there was dessert, too: gingerbread cookies (one was decapitated, but most wore handsome neckties) and pears, peeled and roasted by another guest, Sara.

Chili sauce

After years of being intimidated by the Sriracha hot chili sauce at Thai restaurants, I recently discovered a bottle in the refrigerator door at the apartment I'm subletting in the Petworth neighborhood in D.C. The producer, Huy Fong Foods, says the sauce "is excellent in soups, sauces, pastas, pizzas, hot dogs, hamburgers, chowmein or on anything else to give it a delicious, spicy taste." I agree. I've started squirting it on nearly everything I eat, except perhaps breakfast cereal and peanut butter sandwiches.

The sauce, made from sun-ripened chilies ground into a paste with garlic, is unarguably hot. But it is also rich in color and even boasts some of the sweetness that left me addicted to Marie Sharp's hot sauce during a trip to Belize a few years ago.

Poor Providence

There's rarely good news out of Providence these days, but this is just ridiculous.

In other news, Keryn Gedan...

A recent publication by Rhode Island ecologist Keryn Gedan has been getting lots of media attention lately. It deserves it. (Disclosure: That Keryn and I share a last name is not coincidental; in fact, there are only two unrelated Gedans that I'm aware of living in the U.S., a judge in Hawaii and a reporter in South Florida.) Here's a sampling:

"Some water-loving plants may be out of a home as temperatures rise," The Boston Globe's The Green Blog, August 4, 2009 (read it here)

"Research in Maine Salt Marshes Raises Concerns About Climate Change," Maine Public Broadcasting Network, July 23, 2009 (listen to it here)

"Study: Salt marshes losing diversity," The Providence Journal, July 19, 2009 (read it here)

Keryn blogs at maritima.

'Back in Larchmont'

The Daily Show has a brilliant send-up of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and his struggles to sell his house in my hometown, Larchmont, NY.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Home Crisis Investigation
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance

Couscous

Photo by Jacob L. Silberberg, chicken, couscous with sun-dried tomatoes and roasted vegetables by Mr. Silberberg and Scott Mayerowitz.

Sweet potatoes, raw

Why didn't someone tell me sooner that you can eat sweet potatoes raw? Clearing out our fridge the other night, Keryn had me grate some (raw) sweet potatoes into the (raw) carrot and (raw) red cabbage slaw that she later served with lightly breaded tofu and broccoli. The sweet potatoes added a subtle and fresh sweetness to balance out the spicy spices and heavy sauces.

Contrasts in Connecticut

The brunch menu at O'Rourke's Diner, in Middletown, Conn. (728 Main St.), is exhaustively extensive. Just contemplating the specials must give nervous breakdowns to hung over Wesleyan students on Sunday mornings.

Meeting up with our cousins there last weekend, Keryn and I explored the extremes, though we did not sample everything in between. (I liken the strategy to the Simpsons montage that shows Patty spreading a rumor around Springfield by calling "A. Aaronson" and later "Mr. Zykowski." "There," she says, looking spent, "Aaronson and Zykowski are the two biggest gossips in town.") I, not surprisingly, opted to sample as many of the absurdly long list of meats available, ordering "The Irish Embassy," with corned beef hash and bacon (I substituted Irish bangers), alongside home fries, a poached egg and Irish "brown bread."


Keryn had the yogurt, with granola and fresh fruit.


Everyone munched on the incredibly moist and mind numbingly flavorful pistachio bread and lemon poppy seed pound cake, both complimentary.

Medford feast

The last time I had a meal in Medford, Mass., it was at the Carmichael dining hall at Tufts University, an all-you-care-to-eat affair that most likely involved pizza, lasagna and soft-serve ice cream memorable more for the quantity than the presentations or flavors. Needless to say, the feast prepared by our friends Randi and Jeff the other night made me feel like I may have grown up a bit after all.


The vegetable soup was garnished by sage, oregano and parsley plucked from their Medford garden; the peas in the baby spinach and goat cheese salad, grown at Verrill Farm in Concord, Mass., had that energizing crunchiness their frozen cousins simply can't deliver; the ricotta ravioli, served alongside roasted asparagus, tomatoes and black olives from Whole Foods (Rt. 16, Medford), was baked at Bella Ravioli (369 Main Street, Medford).




The ground sole, served with a homemade Parmesan and pine nut pesto, swam in from Captain Boston Fish (377 Main St., Medford). (I wish I could say the bananas in the bananas foster, halved atop heaping portions of vanilla bean-flecked ice cream, also grew in a Medford backyard rather than Honduras, and you know what, maybe they did. Randi and Jeff would not disclose the secret recipe!)

Scungilli (snail) salad, crawling over R.I. tables

Ever nibble on a snail salad? Me neither. I didn't even known it existed until this weekend. Apparently, however, I'm living in the snail salad capital of the world.

The hungry, roving correspondents behind The Splendid Table's "Where We Eat" stopped by Champlin's Restaurant in Narragansett, R.I., for the July 4 episode. There, they not only guzzled gallons of clam chowder -- creamy New England style, red Manhattan style and Rhode Island style ("Briny, sweet, grayish colored clam broth is loaded with clams, potatoes, salt pork and some seasoning") -- but also feasted on some scrumptious snails. (A side order sells for $7.) The way they made it sound, in Rhode Island, snail is the new caesar.

I don't fully buy it, having lived here for a few years and only heard of snails sightings, if anywhere, at the great French restaurants Chez Pascal, on the East Side, and Pot Au Feu, downtown. But a quick search through The Providence Journal archives shows that, indeed, one can stumble upon snails on a Rhode Island menu. In June, the Projo wrote about the $8 snail salad ("something you don't find at a lot of restaurants") at Silvio's, in Johnston. Snails have apparently also crawled on the menu at Carrie's Seafood Restaurant, in North Providence, and the Atwood Grill, in Johnston. The Projo's food writer, Gail Ciampa, even featured snails in 2005, writing about the "snail-salad king," Al La Greca, owner of Rome Packing, where his majesty sells 4,500 pounds of scungilli (snail) salad every week.

"Of course, there aren't really snails in scungilli salad. Everyone will tell you it's conch. But in fact, scungilli are whelk, and the word even means whelk in Italian," Ciampa writes. "While both are saltwater mollusks that live in spiral shells, conch come from tropical waters, while whelk live in the cool waters off New England. Both are essentially marine snails."

If that made you hungry, Rome sells two version of its snail salad, traditional and marinated. Both include, "the finest fully cooked New England cold water conch, freshly chopped celery and Spanish onions, 100% pure corn oil, blended garlic vinegars, salt, crushed pepper, sugar and selected spices."

(For New England fans of Jane and Michael Stern's food finds, the pair have also bestowed their quirky endorsements to the wieners at John’s New York Systems and the stuffed clams at Mike's Kitchen, both in Cranston, R.I.; the ginger flavor at Gray's Ice Cream and the chow mein at Evelyn's Drive-In, both in Tiverton, R.I.)

Photo of Rome Packing's snail salad by Providence Journal photographer Sandor Bodo.

Crazy Burger, lives up to its name

The (poorly lit, lovingly assembled) "BAA-BAA BURGER" at Crazy Burger in Narragansett, R.I., with ground lamb and feta cheese baked in phyllo dough, with a side of oregano-pepperoncini relish ($10.99).


The (poorly lit, lovingly assembled) fried calamari special at Crazy Burger, where every dish must have at least 12 ingredients. Here, the calamari appetizer includes, among other tasty, colorful tidbits, sun-dried tomatoes, pepperoncini, white wine sauce and shredded cheese.

Chinatown, Seattle

It's not quite San Francisco, but Seattle's Chinatown is fairly enormous, and the food is as tasty as the neighborhood is sketchy (at night). Jade Garden, famous for its dim sum, has huge, bubbling, crowded tanks of live lobster and crabs, great daily specials and a super late closing time (2:30 a.m., M-Th, 3:30 a.m., Fridays and Saturdays).






Try the crab or beef with black bean sauce, or the eggplant in Szechuan Hot Pot ($8.95) and sauteed string beans ($7.95).