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More miscellany – betrayed by greens

What happens when broccoli rabe goes off
Broccoli rabe, rapini, whatever you want to call it – it’s pretty tasty. And I picked up a bunch the last time I was at the farmers’ market.

So I’ve had broccoli rabe go off once before, and you could tell because the stems got hollow and squishy.

Well, this one was pushing its lifespan, so I checked that and it was fine… possibly because these had been well trimmed by the woman selling them. I also smelled them because I remembered that there had been a cleaning solution kind of smell to the leaves, and I did not detect anything off.

So I went ahead with preparing a delicious meal.

First, I browned a slice of bacon until is was very crispy.

In a pot of water, I boiled a link of turkey sausage I pulled out of the freezer.

When the sausage was cooked through, I pulled it out of the water and pulled off the casing as soon as it was cool enough to handle. Then I sliced the sausage into 1/2″ thick rounds, and put it in the bacon fat to brown.

I also added an onion (cut in half and then sliced), some sliced garlic, and two jalepeno peppers (cut off the seeds and then sliced). Oh, and some sliced bell pepper, too.

Then into the pot of water, I dumped 2 ounces of rotini pasta and brought it back to a boil.

About 3 minutes before the pasta would be ready, I added the stems from the roughly cut up broccoli rabe.

About 1 minute before the pasta would be ready, I added the leaves and buds.

Splash some of the pasta water over the leaves to help them wilt and to add a little more liquid to the dish.

Drain the pasta and then dump the noodles in with the sausage and veggies.

I cut up and added some fresh herbs: fennel sprig and basil (and there might have been a leaf of sage or two)

I put up one portion for freezing, and I poured the rest into a bowl and sprinkled with cheddar from the farmers’ market.

And then two bites in, I got this overwhelming taste of ammonia. URGH!

This would have been a great dish, if the broccoli rabe hadn’t gone off.

Let this be a lesson: eat your greens, and eat them promptly!

I least I had already nibbled on the bacon while making the dish.

~*~

So there’s pretty much 1 recipe for green tomatoes (fried, fried with cheese and tomato sauce, fried in pie, totally fried), but there are a ton of recipes for tomatillos. And, to me, they taste pretty similar.

Can you think of any reason why I shouldn’t try tomatillo recipes with my green tomatoes?

Assorted Miscellany

Have satisfied my lingering craving for fish.

Someday I’ll have to figure out a good place to buy fish on a day when I’ll be headed straight home after I hit the place – and then I’ll just have to suck it up and start cooking it enough to get comfortable with the process. At least I like fish in a wide range of donenesses.

There was all you can eat sushi last week and then salmon when I went to see my grandmother over the weekend. The visit went well. Sadly, we weren’t able to schedule a bridge game.

~*~

Chinatown bus went smoothly this time. On the way back, I even had a pair of seats all to myself. I have discovered that a pomegranate, despite being weird, is the best buss food ever… well, if you’re me: because of the way the sectioning works, you can pop off a chunk at a time and put the rest in a container; it’s a filling food that takes a while to eat, so it can fill the entire chunk of time between boarding and getting on the Turnpike without filling you up; picking apart a pomegranate satisfies all of those obsessive urges like wiggling a loose tooth and figuring out just the right angle for slow pressure that will pop the section off cleanly while crushing the fewest peripheral seeds – almost as good as a video game; and it’s all kinds of feminine mythological, so there.

~*~

I am still trying to finish the worst book on Roman food I have ever read. I skipped half a dozen chapters in the middle because I just can’t stand the writing, but I want to finish it so I can write up a proper review… and you never know that he won’t same something fascinating as soon as I stop looking.

~*~

So when I was getting dressed yesterday, I decided I wanted to check and see whether or not my professional-wear would still fit, so I tried on one of my newest acquisitions – a black/white checked skirt. It was too long, but still wearable (should be hemmed 6-8″ so that it hits mid-calf)… and just barely small enough to still fit. I’m not sure whether I should have it tailored or donate it. But I wore it to see how much the size affected wear, and I paired it with a bright red sweater/shell-type thing. I had not thought about the consequences of wearing bright red during the world series. Apparently, the consequences are that you have to have several cheerful conversations with random strangers on the street.

~*~

It was raining and cold when I went home, so I made myself some soup.

Warmed some of the stock I had condensed.

Added 1 tsp soy sauce (because it’s homemade stock, and so it has no salt) and 1 tsp fish sauce.

dumped in about 2 ounces of buckwheat (soba) noodles.

And then I had picked up some chinese broccoli on my way back through chinatown, so I rinsed a few bundles, cut them into coarse (1″) slices, and added them to the soup.

And then here’s the awesome part – in a separate pan, I heated 1 teaspoon sesame oil. And then I sliced 3 cloves of garlic and toasted them in the oil. I also sliced thinly (no seeds) a red jalepeno pepper and tossed that in once the first side of the garlic slices had browned.

This topped the soup.

~*~

Bought a basket on Etsy. Sort of accidentally… I asked if it was possible to modify the shape of another one to make it a size for storing onions, and then she up and made it right away. But it’s gorgeous and fits in my cabinet perfectly. Now I need to find a scrap of cloth and line it because the whole reason I was looking for an onion basket was so that I’d have fewer onion peel crumbs filling up the bottom of the cabinet. Oh, and I need to buy more onions, too, as I’m down to just one.

~*~

Speaking of buying produce, I think I’ll skip my local farmers’ market this weekend so that I can try out a new (to me) one on Sunday that a few of the food blogs talk about (one because she sometimes vends there).

~*~

Argh. And I need to spend more money this weekend. The walk to work this morning (42F raining) proved that I need to hurry up with the acquiring of everyday footwear that is not sandals.

Mmmmm full tummy – Ajia

Suddenly realizing that it was 4:30pm and all I’d eaten so far was a cup of hot chocolate… I figured my little frozen lunch really wasn’t going to cut it. This called for All U Can Eat Sushi!

But, people, especially philly people, let me tell you an amazing thing: I had good service at Ajia!

At this place, you expect long waits, desultory service, and only sort of getting your full order. But this time? Not only did the waitress take my sheet quickly and the sushi chef made my sushi while checking my order regularly, but the service was so good that I had my water refilled frequently. I wanted for nothing. I got back to work before my student worker’s shift was over – even within the scheduled hour for lunch.

“Yes, but how was the food,” you ask. Well, it was pretty standard. Their sushi isn’t the spiffiest around, but it’s $22 for all you can eat. And aside from one dubious bite of squid, it was decent and tasty. And thanks to [redacted]’s suggestion, I had the tasty tempura sweet potato roll.

But I had service which momentously did not suck.

Restaurant Review – Distrito

It took a while for me to notice that there was a new store underneath the ugliest of the new condo buildings in West Philly up back behind the Aveda school.

And it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I stopped in to collect a paper menu so I’d know what sort of food they had and what their hours would be. If I had been smart, I’d have had lunch right then – because the guy handing me the menu was the owner/chef. But I didn’t know that at the time, because who knows what people look like?

However, after I got the menus and started thinking it looked like a fun, if pricey, place to try some upscale mexican food, I started seeing articles about and interviews with Jose Garces, the chef. Apparently, this is the same guy who started Amada and Tinto, two classy center city tapas restaurants I absolutely adore. So my expectations went up, and this restaurant went on the short list of places to try.

So there I was this weekend, and I found myself wanting to try a new (to me) fancy farmers’ market and wanting a place to hang out (not my apartment) and read on Saturday. I rationalized to myself that I could only afford one of those, and if I went out Saturday night then I could spend Sunday exercising instead of buying more food (especially since I have plenty of perishables at the moment). To I set out to walk to center city in search of a coffee shop… and then I remember Distrito.

So I went in, and there was a decent crowd of people dining and chatting, but I was still able to be seated without a wait (Saturday night circa 7:30pm)… apparently that’s because this place is huge! There are two floors and plenty of tables. But while both Tinto and Amada are decorated in dark colors with muted palettes, the decor here is bright pinks with greens of aquas. I was seated on a wicker swing. The stairs are lined with mexican wrester masks. Here – have some pictures. But that’s fine. There’s also fairly loud music. And a guy with a guitar singing something completely different at the same time. And a movie being projected (though luckily that one was muted with subtitles). Aight, fine, so they are going for something more lively for the college crowd.

But what is really disappointing in comparison to the other restaurants is the service. At the other places you have a (okay, fine, very attractive) wait staff that is sophisticated and very knowledgeable about the food. They are also very efficient and welcoming (even to people who take the last seating in the middle of restaurant week and still linger over their food). Distrito, however, seems to have been less selective in its hiring practices. These were very average waiters who seemed to have very little interest in either the food or the patrons. In fact, the only interest my waiter seemed to show was toward encouraging me to purchase alcohol to boost my ticket, but it was another waiter entirely who stopped by (after I’d had a long period of reading uninterrupted) to offer me dessert.

You know what? That wasn’t the only thing disappointing. The food wasn’t as awesome, either. It was good, but it wasn’t, “Oh my god, I have to tell you about this amazing food,” levels of awesome that I’m used to from this guy. I started off with something cheap – Tuetano: bone marrow with bacon marmalade, onion, jalepeno, and cilantro ($8). So I got two marrow bones, and there was a toasty crust on top and lots of hot squishy marrow inside. For those of you who haven’t tried it, marrow is almost pure fatty goodness with a dark rich taste. So I scooped some into my 4″ corn tortilla, added some bacon marmalade (really the reason why I ordered this dish. Bacon marmalade! Best I can figure, it’s bacon with a thick balsamic reduction, and maybe a gelling agent, but I couldn’t figure any other flavors), and sprinklings of the other toppings. The marrow melted down and dripped just a little in a good way, and it generally rather tasty. But, oddly, the tortillas did not taste homemade to me… and I would kind of expect that to be a minimum. And then I didn’t run into any other trouble until I finished my 4 tortillas and had to pile on the marrow just to finish the first of the two marrow bones. And then I had to wait and let the marrow cool down while I waited for supplementary tortillas and condiments. Honestly, by the time I was finished my first tapa, I was pretty full. So it’s not that it wasn’t good, but it didn’t have the same sense of balance as I’d expect. Really, this restaurant would be a lot better, if I weren’t comparing it to the others.

But anyway, since I’m not planning to come back for dinner any time too soon, I ordered a second dish – Esquites: sweet corn, queso fresco, chipotle, lime ($5). It come out as a rather soupy corn dish in a glass. And it was tasty. I didn’t taste much chipotle, but the lime was just the right note without being too strong.

Guy came to offer me dessert, and I just ordered a mexican hot chocolate. Mmmmm. This was fairly weak on the chocolate, but I am finding that I tend to prefer that (weird, I know, but hey), and it was all frothy milk from top to bottom.

What else? Oh, I tried the house margarita (Jimador silver reposado, orange, lime – not frozen, with salt – $9), and it was good, but it still wasn’t better than my favorite margarita (embarrassingly enough, my favorite is Chili’s Presidente margarita).

ETA: Foodzings has pictures of the food I ate. And here is another food blogger’s visit. Both these people said nicer things than I did.

So Distrito is a solid Meh, Whatever. Too fancy to go there casually, but too casual to go there for fancy.

Events for Local People

Shape Pink for Pilates (you caught me, this is a national event)
but my pilates teacher is running two classes where all of the proceeds will go toward breast cancer research, and she is worried because there has been an ebb in attendance lately and she doesn’t want to have to send in a check for just $40 or something.
So come – meet my awesome teacher. Really, she’s great at smoothly and (mostly) painlessly explaining technique and with modifying the workouts for various skill levels.

Tuesday, October 21, 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 25, 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
just $10/class

Taste of Philly
And, sure, this one also benefits charity – in this case it’s a local dance group – but that’s not the important part. The important part is that it’s a whole bunch of swanky restaurants showing off their food. And it’s while I’m at work, so you have to go and tell me about it so I can figure out whether or not to take vacation time to go to it next year.

Wednesday, October 22, 7:00 to 10:00 p.m.
$30

Leslie Klinger
who wrote an Annotated Sherlock Holmes that my mother loved, is doing a book tour for an Annotated Dracula. Is anyone free to get a signed book for my mother?

Rosenback Museum
2008 Delancey St.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
6:00pm – 7:30pm
free