Animal Boy

Between "Super Size Me," "Food Inc." and "King Corn," and Matt the Electrician's ode to the homegrown ("My ancestors grew something/Real food is all I know/We’re gonna grow a little boy/Just like 100 years ago"), I feel a little guilty (like the gnawing, "McStomach" feeling "Super Size Me" groans about) whenever I Piponerate only about eating out.







So here are few pizzas, including a pie with brie and orange bell peppers, and other treats we've been whipping up lately, like roasted kale chips and curried fingerlings with melted havarti, and Dark 'n' Stormy cocktails and fried mashed potatoes (Somerville, Mass.-Sound Bites style), with great help from our Radix Farm farmshare; from another of Tanya's beloved South African BBQs; and from my friend Art Jirut, whose Iron Chef competition last Sunday inspired an eggplant loaf (served alongside vanilla bean ice cream and crushed walnuts); eggplant tempura; sauteed eggplant polenta with sausages; eggplant and yellow squash tacos (sprinkled with turmeric and slathered in fresh mint raita); pureed eggplant bruschetta; and stuffed chicken breasts with diced eggplant, couscous, sundried tomatoes and capers.

Strikes no gutters

The wedding favors included a homemade cookbook with a recipe for the couple's favorite spinach, chiptole and lime dip. So for a pre-wedding, Mexican-style lunch on the lively, downtown pedestrian mall in Charlottesville, Va., I followed their recommendations. Sadly, Mono Loco was closed, and so was Cinema Taco. But the huevos rancheros at Bizou offered a soft landing, runny eggs on crunchy tacos crowned by punchy feta.

Closer to home, I've got a few more Darts & Laurels/Strikes & Gutters/"Fillet of Sole, De La Soul, Seoul (that place in Korea)" for you, only in honor of summer, only strikes today.

Strikes:

The portions at Carmine's (425 7th St. NW), in Chinatown, no match in quality to Pasta Mia (1790 Columbia Rd. NW), or Cafe Milano (3000 Whitehaven St. NW), at the Italian Embassy, but enough pasta to feed you for an entire weekend.
 
The girlie but refreshing "Sojutinis" at Mandu (18th/K NW), just $4 during happy hour.

The whole menu at Bar Pilar (1833 14th St. NW), where patrolling for an empty seat gives the meal a real hunter-gatherer vibe.

The fried chicken at Founding Farmers (1924 Pennsylvania Ave. NW), a "Man v. Food" kinda adventure, paired with the obligatory waffles, but also with viscous white gravy and syrup, mac ‘n cheese and Brussels sprouts.

The New Orleans sausages at Creme (1322 U St. NW), an inspired pick-me-up for poached eggs.

The fish taco appetizer at Perry's (1811 Columbia Rd. NW), with guacamole and cabbage, good enough to justify ordering Tex-Mex at that schizophrenic sushi joint.

The name of Ping Pong (900 7th St. NW) (I'm trying to be positive), the oddly popular dim sum restaurant in Chinatown.

Everything at Bodega (3116 M St. NW), in Georgetown, the best small plates I've had in DC, including the "Ensaladilla de Palmitos con Gambas" (hearts of palm, chilled shrimp, avocado and salsa rosa) and the "Dátiles con Tocino" (crispy fried dates wrapped in bacon). Bodega is tastier than the well-meaning Mezè (2437 18th Street NW) in Adams Morgan, with its strange fascination with mojitos, and even the exceptional Bar Pilar. It's so good, in fact, that you don't feel pick-pocketed afterward, the emotional hangover of a meal  at most small plates spots around town, like Agora (1527 17th St. NW) in Dupont.


The kielbasa and cabbage and meat pierogis at the Polish Embassy open house.

The arepas at the Sabor'a food truck.

The goat curry with jollof rice at the Ghana Cafe (1336 14th St. NW), where the fufu is as gloppy, and the groundnut soup as greasy, as tradition demands.

Any appetizer, entree or dessert on offer at Tastebuds (49 W. Ferry St.) in New Hope, Penn., in Bucks County, worth the journey to the Delaware, where all bridges, and Bridge Roads, lead to New Hope.

Nexus of the universe

I realized that the Times's potato leek gratin and The Argula Files's tortilla española had virtually the same ingredients, and that revelation gave me a taste of the serendipitous thrill Kramer experiences when he ventures to Lower Manhattan. "Hey, I'm on First and First. How can the same street intersect with itself? I must be at the nexus of the universe!"

Above, roasted eggplant and red pepper with melted Gruyere and locally pickled vegetables from Delicias Market (3702 14th St. NW, by Spring Rd.) on a toasted baguette. Below, Kramer.

Veggie bomb

Jane & Michael Stern inspired me to raise my game this morning, after I heard their Splendid Table account of a meal at Nick Tahou Hots in Rochester, NY, where they bravely dived into a "garbage plate," including Texas hot wieners, hamburgers, Italian sausage (or steak) served alongside baked beans and home-fried potatoes, cool macaroni salad, spicy chili sauce, mustard and chopped raw onions. I'm not nearly as hard-core, but I did up the ante on my Saturday morning "double burger," typically a MorningStar black bean patty topped by a MorningStar veggie sausage patty and doused in Sriracha, peanut satay sauce, and either Olde Cape Cod honey mustard or hummus. Today, inspired by the "garbage plate" (a distant cousin of the Uruguayan chivito?), I inaugurated the "veggie bomb," a MorningStar black bean patty crowned by a fried egg and drowned in Heinz vegetarian baked beans and mashed avocado.

By the way, I'm glad to see mainstream media love for Sriracha, but given its high profile these days, is it still truly the "underground king of condiment"? As I've said before, Sriracha is about as underground as Jarritos, whereas Marie Sharp's is the unsung hero of imported hot sauce.

Walter's style

I thought I was all high brow/low browing around when I had lunch at the soup's-up-when-the-microwave-beeps Dos Gringos (3116 Mount Pleasant St. NW) in Mount Pleasant, followed by dinner at Poste (555 8th St. NW) downtown by Chinatown.


I topped that tonight, however, when I got hungry while blending a pistachio pesto (recipe from The Splendid Table), and ended up eating for dinner a Hebrew National hot dog, boiled and then sauteed, all hometown Walter's style.

Lefty's leftovers

I was inspired by a friend in Tenleytown, who whooped me in my 1st colonial attempt at Settlers of Catan but made up for it by serving up 3 exceptional pizzas, including one topped by potatoes so thinly sliced you could have piled them on top of my resource cards and still seen that all I had were a pile of bricks. So I adapted a couple of Epicurious recipes, including a sliced and roasted cauliflower appetizer that I doused with the recommended olive oil-lemon-garlic dressing but substituted Parmesan for the Kalamata topping; and a corn and tomato scramble that involved sauteed fresh corn kernels and scallions cooled and tossed with tomatoes marinated in olive oil and cider vinegar (and accompanied by chopped endive, in my version).  


Today's breakfast, a leftover Lefty's Barbecue burger from last night's building BBQ sacrilegiously mingling with MorningStar veggie sausage patties and the Mexican tortilla scramble known as migas.

Can Opener

For a minute, I truly contemplated okra tacos. But I flinched, in a moment of lame vegetable aisle wimpiness, and so sweet corn became the taco night headliner. "Sweet corn is an emotional food when you eat it picked fresh from the field, just full of feelings, you just sit and you weep" (A Prairie Home Companion). Perhaps at Lake Wobegon. Here in DC, the most I can say is it sure is cheap and crunchy.
   

Speaking of corn, I was excited to see Open City (2331 Calvert St. NW), the overrated Woodley Park cousin of Adams Morgan's underrated 24-hour Diner (2453 18th St. NW) and Tryst (next door to The Diner) trying to work some magic with creamed corn. You see, creamed corn was a childhood staple in our house, served with Heinz vegetarian baked beans and grated Parmesan. Open City's version? A concocted coconut creamed corn side sold for $3.50 a bowl. I'd hate to hate on the yellowy, gooey, crunchy gruel, since I'm a pretty nostalgic fellow, but I'm going to stick with the Gedan corn-and-beans recipe.

There are a few things that I can recommend. The beer flight at Meridian Pint (3400 11th St. NW, opposite RedRocks); the family style lunch specials at the shadowy Magic Gourd (528 23rd St NW, in Foggy Bottom); everything at Pho 14 (1436 Park Rd. NW, in Columbia Heights), the biggest food bargain in DC, and that's including the deeply discounted Morningstar products at the nearby Target; the happy hour cocktails at Bar Dupont (1500 New Hampshire Av. NW), but only out on the patio; the phoenix roll (shrimp tempura, spicy tuna and avocado) ($12), a nice mix of mushy mashed tuna and crunchy fried shrimp, at Perry's (1811 Columbia Rd. NW, in Adam's Morgan), but only up on the roof; the Texas Burger ($11), slathered with smoky chipotle BBQ sauce and topped by pickles, fried onion straws and coleslaw, but with the upper bun brilliantly held aloft by a toothpick, keeping it blissfully unsoggy, served alongside gimmicky but tasty Tater Tots, at Tonic (2036 G St. NW, in Foggy Bottom); and finally, arguably the best meal in South Dupont Circle (other than the once-a-year free burgers and hot dogs and pizza served up in the Circle by the DC police), the barbacoa burrito at Tomatillo Taqueria, the Mexican takeout lunch stand at The Big Hunt (1347 Connecticut Ave. NW), served best with the spicy tomatillo sauce, fresh pico de gallo and guacamole (it's an extra $1 for the avocado) and sauteed onions, but it's cash only and closed from August 9-13.

Waterworld

My fried, Naureen, ordered us the garlic naan ($3.50), raita ($3), the baingan bharta ($10) (grilled fresh eggplant sautéed with ginger, garlic, onion and tomatoes), and the kurkuri bhindi ($11) (fresh, crisp okra sautéed with onions, tomato, green pepper, dry mango powder and fresh herbs), all served with basmatic saffron rice. "I'll have the same," I joked. 30 minutes later, our waiter arrived and began serving two platters of everything we'd ordered.

So that was my bad. But you can't blame me that the eggplant tasted like apple sauce, the result of some kind of wild cardamon explosion in the kitchen. So I guess, Indian Ocean (4221 Connecticut Ave. NW, in Van Ness), we're even.

Toledo

As I explore the DC food scene, there are a few mysteries I cannot yet unravel:

1. Why do so many Chinese fast food joints serve subs?
2. Why do so many Mexican restaurants, including the highly regarded but surprisingly high-priced Mixtec (1792 Columbia Rd. NW), serve waffles?
3. Why do so many people wait for so long to eat at Pasta Mia (1790 Columbia Rd. NW)? (My best guess: crack in the marinara.)

While I dig into these eccentricities, here are a few things I have figured out over the past few days:

1.  El Tamarindo (1785 Florida Ave. NW) is now abierto las 24 on weekends, joining The Diner (2453 18th St. NW) as an Adams Morgan source of decent late-night eats.
2. On Wednesdays, the grimy but hip Toledo Lounge (2435 18th St. NW) serves up mediocre but cheap grilled cheese sandwiches ($3.50) and $2 draft beer. (It appears likely that the cheese in the grilled cheese, Toledo's top seller, comes to the bar pre-sliced and individually plastic wrapped, if you know what I mean. But the bread is nicely buttered and browned, and the onion rings are fat and delicious.)

En brodo

I owe Pipón capsule reviews of a handful of restaurants we've visited lately, including El Rincón Español (1826 Columbia Rd. NW), a great tapas joint in Adams Morgan; Mama Ayesha's (1967 Calvert St. NW), a popular Middle Eastern restaurant in Woodley Park; and Thaiphoon (2011 S St. NW), a mediocre local Thai chain that competes with Thaitanic (locations in Columbia Heights and Logan Circle) for the most clever Thai pun. (kg has promised some penitent guest blogging after ditching me for great meals at The Diner (2453 18th St. NW), run 24 hours a day by the good people at Tryst, and Volt (228 N. Market St., Frederick, Md), that most talked about of Frederick attractions.)

In the meantime, we've done a bit of cooking. Above, my new 30 Minute Meal, cheese tortellini, sauteed mushrooms and onions and baby spinach served in vegetable broth (en brodo) instead of red sauce.


To get people to drink some wine with us up on the roof, our Argentine friend Lara mashed up some gnocchi and kg whipped up some crème brûlée. Below, proof that Lara has not become too American to make make gnocchi, at least on the 29th, and kg's newest pizza eccentricity, toppings underneath.

Saints Preserve Us

Above, Saturday night's couscous with roasted sweet potato and carrots, and butternut squash pasta with gorgonzola. Below, Toll House cookies, the quickest path between hunger and sweet-toothed bliss.


If any of that sounds at all appetizing, try it out on the night you had planned to go to Saint-Ex.

It'd be way too generous to say that Saint-Ex (1847 14th Street NW) suffers, à la Obama, from unfairly high expectations. It is simply overpriced, overhyped and overrated. I'm not sure why it's so in demand, other then inertia and the long lines created by its frustrating policy of not accepting reservations. It's certainly not the "charming" ambiance. The basement is a shadowy bar; the main level, lacking a coat rack and adequate lighting, gets packed like a rush hour Metrobus. I tried the $36 prix fixe menu, sampling a special tortilla appetizer that showcased chopped, soggy chicken, and an overcooked steak. One of the fish entrees looked enticing, but our Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch app recommended "avoid." I'd say the same about Saint-Ex.

Iceland, Greenland

Be forewarned, the restaurant "Mix" in Frederick, Md. (207 West Patrick Street), is not some hipster bistro that specializes in a creative fusion cuisine (say, Spanish-Ghanaian), or a locavore salad bar that in wintertime sells only hydroponic tomatoes and root vegetables. It's actually spelled "Mick's," and as they'd say in Rhode Island, it's where Jennifer's used to be.

Turns out, however, that even though it may sound like an Irish pub, Mick's has a fairly ambitious chef. Last Saturday night, the specials included arancini (fried rice balls coated with breadcrumbs) that Mick's had stuffed with risotto and bison meat; and a Piedmontese strip steak served atop a white bean puree and alongside Hen of the Woods mushrooms in a Tunisian brik.

Mick, meanwhile, is not the only one cooking these days. I recently found a pile of graffiti eggplants at Harris Teeter and tossed them (peeled and diced, of course) into the wok on Sunday night with scallions and string beans. Last night, I attempted a pasta recipe involving freshly roasted beets and goat cheese. It was as delicious as the stir fry, but I'll say this: No point buying tri-colored pasta when everything ends up bright purple at the end.




Two bonuses (pardon the Wall Street lingo, but I saw Hank Paulson speak today): Listen here to an interesting Marketplace segment on the food scene in Cleveland that may make you less skeptical about the good eats in downtown Frederick; click here for a slide show on DCist of (non-food related but no less entertaining) photos from Washington's Valentine's Day "Cupid's Undie Run."

Brown sugar

Carrot and sweet potato soup.

Curried Ballston

Here's what I think my friend Anoop cooked up tonight in his Ballston high-rise: curried broccoli and potatoes with black mustard seeds and spiced basmati rice. We scooped it up by hand, the greatest of utensils.

Couscous, carrots

In a tagine, couscous with chickpeas and sauteed sliced carrots, onions and garlic, adapted from Pam Anderson's Perfect Recipes for Having People Over. I added ground cumin; next time, I'm going to sneak in some chopped pistachios.

Curried veggie burgers

Corn gusto is my Uruguayan homage, curried onions are just a way to stain my entire kitchen the color of turmeric.

Zakuski

Let me preface this post by saying that I in no way blame Lynne Rossetto Kasper for my many missteps on New Year's Eve. For the most part, the problems were, as ever, those of execution. That said, I'm really not sure what I could possibly have been thinking when I listened to an interview with food writer Diana Henry on The Splendid Table and decided to make Zakuski, or Russian small plates, for our New Year's Eve party. After all, I had no cayenne pepper, a surprisingly common ingredient in the recipes I dug up; I had no experience preparing Eastern European eats; and I had no idea how unforgiving these dishes could be.


I'll spare you the gruesome details and offer only the learned-it-the-hard-way lessons:

1. If you're skipping the sour cream, dill and sauteed mushrooms and scallions are better served hot. (Saddled with fridge-cramping leftovers, I resuscitated the mushrooms the next evening in a risotto.)
2. Smoked fish is too expensive to buy for 25 people.
3. Not even the most refreshing squirt of lemon juice can induce guests to dig into cold, partially mashed kidney beans served with stewed prunes, red wine vinegar, mint and cilantro.

In the end, even the platters of canned sauerkraut and pickled beets sat mostly untouched. (My brother, in town for New Year's Eve, referred to the entire spread as condiments in search of a hot dog.) Fortunately, I had bought cheese and pita, whipped up some spinach-and-artichoke dip and brown-sugared roasted sweet potato slices, persuaded a friend to bake a few pecan pies and received homemade rugelach from an adventurous South Asian guest. Those snacks, washed down with my wife's fruity champagne punch and my sister-in-law's Puerto Rican coquitos, managed to keep spirits high all night. But I'll say this: No one was begging me for recipes as they headed out the door.

Salvadoran singeing

Lessons from experimental taco night:

1. The "International Progreso Market" in Mount Pleasant hides the aguacate behind the cashiers.
2. Lazy cilantro chopping leads to chewy tacos.
3. Jalapeño peppers do not mellow after roasting, and anything roasting nearby, including whole poblano peppers, ends up gums-singing hot.

Risotto, baked not stirred

Asparagus and green peas risotto, baked not stirred. Thanks to Pam Anderson's Perfect Recipes for Having People Over, I was saved from hours of risotto tending on the stovetop. Instead, I simply toasted the risotto in a Le Creuset Dutch oven, then poured in some vegetarian chicken broth and sauteed garlic and moved the Dutch oven into the actual oven, after sealing it with tin foil and the pot's heavy lid. I added the shaved Paremsan, sauteed asparagus and peas just before serving.

Food Inc.

I finally got around to watching Food Inc. No big surprises, having heard many an interview with Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto). Still, it's always good to be reminded of the "highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA." Seriously. It's easy to mock the "locavore" movement and pretend that "agroindustry" operations resemble traditional farms with pasture that just goes on and on. It's actually more like a cleaner, more efficient but no less terrifying reprise of the nightmarish, mass-production food factories in Sinclair's The Jungle.

Fortunately, my sister-in-law, Marni, cooked only veggies for us while we watched the documentary. Her gingered and curried lentils include lots of baby spinach, canned tomatoes and chopped celery.