Smoked Salmon, Goat Brie and Other Treats (With More Catan)

Another day with more floating, sunning, reading and playing. For another outdoor game I put together a little smoked salmon plate with goat brie, cornichons, capers and red onions. A perfect accompaniment to the game and location.

Dinner in Tivoli c/o Panzur

After enjoying the afternoon and early evening down by the river, I departed the Inn(ski) and walked the half mile or so up to Tivoli's small business district along Broadway. There I met up with L., a former professor, for dinner at Panzur. Panzur is a relatively new establishment in the neighborhood. Its building has hosted a series of restaurants since before my time in the area, the most memorable and sorely missed being Cafe Pongo. I thought it proper to start the meal with a glass of bubbly. And oh how it sparkle bubbled.
After our handsome waiter told us a little bit about the specials, the chef, and the restaurant itself, we got down to the nitty gritty of figuring out what to enjoy. L's appetite wasn't quite as limitless as my own, but I think that we managed to put together a series of dishes that she could enjoy. This series started with a selection of olives and and peppers. Nice and brined. I still wonder what olives taste like before they're cured. Anybody know? Inedible? The peppers that also accompanied the olives were particularly delightful to me.
Next up a very generous plate of jamon. I think it was of the serrano variety. At $13 or $14 this was actually a good deal. I think. I had expected a rather minimal amount of meat, but this was really a plate overflowing with fatty cured meat, which in fact had been sliced fresh at the jamon etc. table along the back of the restaurant's main room, right below its chalkboard of specials. We also ordered a Valdeon blue cheese, which came with slice of baguette.
I was drawn to two specials that evening. The first lobster glazed pork belly with a poached oyster and arugula salad. The belly was succulent and its glaze a nice addition. I don't know what I expected from the oyster, but I was a bit taken back by the fact that it was 100% cold, but cooked. I think. It was kind of confusing in my mouth, part of me liked the taste, but the temperature and texture weirded me out slightly. And you know I love oysters, so it's not a matter of being unfamiliar with their 'milieu.'
The other special that caught my fancy were these foie gras croquette type things. A crispy shell contained a rather 'molten' foie gras inside. Like liquid foie gras cut with something, but I wasn't quite sure what. I liked this very much, especially my first bite as it was still piping hot.
We did the ultimate of splurges and ordered their dessert cocktail, which was a mix of sherry from 1985, two or three other liqueurs and topped with a slice of baguette spread liberally with a salty caramel sauce. At $15, it was an order of some largesse and perhaps failed a bit under the expectations and weight that price tag can lend to its intended ware.
The next morning, which I'll get to soon enough, M. the Baker asked me what I thought about the restaurant and its prices. Having come from Philly, the prices didn't shock me too terribly, though if I were to really think about my time in the area, I do acknowledge that their price points may make business a struggle. Not every dish was off the charts, but it was clear that there was a knowledgeable and creative chef in the back, one who may very well be having a lot of fun and he tries out new dishes. I would go back for the cured meat alone, and perhaps try one or two other of the hot tapas options. It was great to see L., whom I had last seen this past summer when I stopped by for a job interview that went nowhere. We caught up about our shared acquaintances as well as the goings-on in our own lives and have a pleasant time doing so.

Sunday Mezze

I got back from my walk, took a shower and put on fresh clothes. Here's proof.
Then many of us started prepping the table that would serve as eating central for H.'s friends and guests. I brought these olives and two different kinds of cured salami type meats. Then I cut the salamis and made this plate.
I also brought two different kinds of wood smoked salmon and created this plate. Capers. Red onions. Lemon. Hard boiled egg.
Folks either sat in the living room or on the porch to chat.
A., H.'s brother, brought out drinks on a cutting board turned serving tray.
B. and D. came from Silver Spring. Here B. is with her plate.
Here is my own plate. I love cheese. I should have taken more photographs of the cheese. I do declare it was an obscene amount of cheese. Disgusting. Over the top. Too much to bear. Awesome. Incroyable! I also like black olives. Did I mention my feelings about cheese?





Though i was enjoying myself and could have filled up three more plates, I needed to get on the road home. B. and D. departed around the same time as me. Here they are.
There will be one more Virginia-based post, in which my drive out of town is properly recorded. But this was the end of the social times. It was quite lovely to see H. after over five years, as well as H. and A. and all the other nice people that came out over the weekend. I had visions of returning to the house secretly and spackling and painting its cracked and fading bedroom walls and just sitting, watching the light change for some indeterminate but very long time.

Snacks c/o Fare, Booze c/o McCrossens and Autumn Planning

So last Friday LW and I met up in order to enjoy the last of the not so bad weather before the hurricane. We decided to start our evening at Fare, the newest restaurant in the neighborhood. This is what an alley looked like as the sun set, with the help of photoshop.
I ordered a glass of Belleruche Chapoutier Viognier, which was good but not earth shattering in its goodness.
LW ordered their chicken thighs while I chose to try their small plate of braised leeks and fennel with nicoise olives and goat cheese. My first bite was kind of bland, I liked the texture fine enough but even with the olives there wasn't a lot of bite or pop going on. This improved once I actually got a smear of the goat cheese, which was buried underneath the leeks and fennel.
The baguette-like bread accompanying the dish was nicely toasty but still forgiving on the teeth with a nice chewiness going on. LW wasn't amazed by her chicken, and I wasn't amazed by this ... but I would give the place one more try before giving up the ghost.
After our meals we embarked to McCrossen's where we enjoyed a few beers and asked T. to solve our life problems. T.'s advice to me involved continuing to write my blog but to stop with the meandering, stream of consciousness content. Which reminds me of this one time when I was in high school and there was a dance and many of us got drunk...which, come to think of it, reminds me of this other time, in college, when I made the most revelatory comment in a literature class and was summarily applauded by all of my peers all of whom were drunk and sitting on unicorns. I'm sorry, was I saying something? Oh yes, so according to T. my life's problems are unsolvable. What a terrible angle for me. It really brings out my turtle features in a way that I'd rather stayed hidden. Alas.
According to LW I may be better off in life if I join a dart team...So now it seems that I'm going to be on a dart team. I will not buy darts. No. LW's friend and I will share her castoffs. I plan on buying THE SPERMINATOR flights in order to stand out from the crowd. I think it perfectly represents my character and capabilities. My nickname on the team will officially be: "C the closer C." It has more of a ring to it if I used my real name.

A good time was had by me and I think LW. And while most of my life's problems haven't actually been solved, I'm not going to moan about it any more. Tonight.

Hazy Shade of Summer, Plus Radishes and Tomatoes

On Sunday I went to the Hellertown Farmer's Market. I didn't take any photographs because it wasn't quite as extensive as I had been hoping it might be. And the main produce presence was Trauger's ... which I had visited the day before at their actual farm. It was a strange day in terms of weather. Hazy but warm. Threatening to rain but not actually raining. Or at least not for the majority of the day.
For lunch I made myself another lovely plate. This time with radishes, cucumbers, tomato, olives and goat brie. All was right with the world.

DIY Pseudo Nicoise

For lunch that second day I commandeered some of Dad's left over tuna steak, repurposed one of the grilled potatoes and created my low-rent version of a Salad Nicoise, rounding it out with mixed greens and olives. I think I just did a little salt and nothing else in terms of dressing. The lack of dressing was the salad's main flaw, but it was still good on the whole.

Pizza!

We continue to go with the ricotta, green olive and mushroom combination on the nights I go over to C. and R.'s to cleanse my clothes and wash my palate in wine.

Branching Out

On a Thursday I dragged a bag full of dirty clothes over to C. and R.'s for our semi-weekly trifecta of pizza, wine and laundry. Or, as my people would say, PWL. What? I don't think I really have people. Anyways. We went with a slightly different combination of toppings than usual: ricotta, olives and mushrooms. It worked. Though we noted that perhaps green olives would have given the whole thing a little more punch. I liked the big dollops of ricotta, I'd spread one a little around on a slice to it wasn't just one large blob in one large bite. I believe we went with an all so classy big ass bottle of Frontera Malbec, which we completed with a little help from R.

Tenderloin and Lattkes c/o the W. Party

Friday also turned out to be my birthday. This is not surprising, my birthday, like most, comes once a year, almost always on the same day. Duh. Anyways, that's not really the point. Regardless of my birthday B. and D.'s daughter and husband have a big party each year on the day after Thanksgiving and I was invited to come along. This was a party for grown ups but not parents. So my father, B. and D. were not invited, but R. and his cousin C. were...so then I, along with C.'s friend and boyfriend, joined in. The W. house was big and the party was well attended and provisioned in pretty much every possible way. The photographs aren't overly good because I felt a little self-conscious taking pictures in the midst of so many strangers.
These lattkes were off the hook.
And this beef tenderloin? Also off the hook.
I enjoyed going out to the outdoor fireplace but didn't really take over its feeding, there were a number of motivated and opinionated men already doing so...man that fire was really, really hot. I was also, I swear, checked out as a possible egg donor/surrogate. It was odd. While I would like to get more attention from men, I would prefer they weren't a gay couple.
K. and G. were serious in their food offerings. At a certain hour, after ping pong was played and brownies were consumed, bacon, egg and cheese croissants appeared. Madness, in the best possible way.
R. and K. showing each other some sibling love.
While going to a party at which I would only peripherally know about four people would have terrified me in high school or college, I am no longer quite as paralyzed by such a situation now that I am 29. There. I said it. I am 29. Not 27/26. Not 28. Not 30. God. R. was good about keeping me in the loop, which I was grateful for. It was a good time. Thanks to the W.'s for the excellent party complete with a great garage experience;)

Salad and Pizza c/o Dewey's

On the whole I made good time getting to Columbus, even with my lunch/pretty stop. After hanging around my aunt and uncle's for a bit, we all (me, my cousin K. and aunt and uncle) got ourselves over to Dewey's. I'd never been to this particular pizza joint before. They had a nice beer list; I went with the Troeg's Amber, and a wider range of pizza toppings. I had the peppercorn ranch salad, which was pleasing and not too heavily dressed.
I expressed an interest in the Green Lantern (red sauce, mozzarella cheese, minced garlic, mushrooms, goat cheese, artichokes pesto) and the Socrates Revenge (olive oil, minced garlic, mozz/fontina blend, spinach, black olives, green olives, feta cheese, red onions and tomatoes) pizzas and K. and my aunt suggested we get a half and half pizza. I dug both of them; I liked the pesto element of the Green Lantern while I enjoyed the tomato/feta aspect of Socrates' Revenge. My aunt said that though she probably never would have ordered the Green Lantern pizza (I think that's the one) on her own, she was surprised by how much she actually liked it. I'm not sure how K. felt. My uncle, a famously simple eater, went with his own pepperoni pizza.
Then K. and I went to her place where I drank a light beer and she drank some old wine. We tried watching Saturday Night Live, but it wasn't terribly funny. Then I accidentally brushed my teeth with K.'s Icy/Hot pain relief balm. This was a relatively understandable mistake, I assure you, though I won't lie: it took a rather longer than one might hope for time for me to realize my mistake....and then I was so sheepish about it that I didn't tell K. about it until the next morning. I didn't ingest any of it, thank goodness, but I did worry about the tube's instructions. In other words, the instructions were to go to a hospital/contact a medical professional...but I was fairly certain I'd be ok....though I also worried that I would end up having a seizure in the middle of the night as the Icy/Hot traces wended their ways through my large and small intestines. Or something. Poor K. would come into the guestroom in the morning and find me seized: hot in some spots, icy in others.

Greek Salad c/o Mugshots

The Mugshots Greek salad wasn't bad. They provide enough olives and that's really important. To me.

Dinner c/o Miel

Another day, another sunset walk back to the hotel.
Later that evening, my father and I went to Miel for dinner. I started with a glass of sparkling wine, the name of which (of course) escapes me. Oh wait, maybe I do remember it. Well, on the receipt it says 'Poema.'
Forgive the color casts, please. The amuse bouche.
Dad chose to go with the $30 prix fixe menu, which included a soup or salad option, choice of three entrees, and dessert. I went a slightly less economical way and ordered the Osso Bucco. Before our entrees arrived, however, we snacked on fresh bread, creamy butter, lovely marinated olives and some of the best soup either of us have had in quite some time. The soup, pureed sunchokes with caramelized onions, was nice and hot. Oh man, and delicious. Did I mention the delicious-ness quotient? It was quite high. Quite high indeed.

Dad ordered a bottle of 2008 Domaine Faury Syrah. This was a fine, fine wine. Nicely balanced and mellow. I ended up drinking more than my fair share, and its buzz was a generally optimistic expansive kind.
The Osso Bucco came with polenta and a little toothpick with which to scoop out the marrow of the huge chunk of tender goodness's central bone. I have no doubt I will one day write far more on this meal and methods - in terms of the context of this meal - but for the time being I'll abstain from too much intellectualization of my food and simply say that it was quite rich, but delightful.

Dad's meal ended with sorbet. I don't think I tried much of it, but it also looked great.
The final touch of the meal was a plate with two dollops of honey splaced on silver spoons. This was entirely appropriate, as 'Miel' is the French word for honey. I believe this particular honey was relatively local, and it definitely had more depth that your usual honey bear variety.
Just a great, great meal. Service was a little wacky. When we arrived, the front door was locked because the host had gone into the back and felt it best to keep any potential customers out of the foyer...weird. Our waiter was generally on top of his game, though I picked up on a certain 'I am not just a waiter and resent being considered such' vibe from him, which I, as a former service worker, understand but could have done without.

Also, on an entirely unrelated note, though chronologically relevant:

On our return to the hotel, L. called my cell phone. Dad went on up to the hotel room while I spoke with her in the hotel's back parking lot area. It was during this conversation that I saw the pants-less man. Or, as my cousin K. called him when I told her about it, the 'Nash Villain.' Heh. I just can't quite get over it. I mean, it was a well-lit and traveled parking lot, and not too late at night, and yet I turn my head and see a naked butt receding from my view? Where did he come from?! Why no pants!? These were, of course, questions I immediately started to discuss with L. I can only imagine that the pants-less man heard these queries and thought it best to return to show me the view from the front (which didn't really answer any of the questions). I can't tell you a thing about his face, so distracted was I by his pink tee shirt, longish gray hair and, oh yes, the 'junk.' When did people first start referring to male genitalia as 'junk'? Well, I guess I can now cross 'see naked man's scrotum and penis in a Nashville hotel parking lot' off my bucket list.