Finger food that isn't crabs

Mt. Vernon has long been considered (by me at least, but I am sure other people agree) the ethnic food epicenter of Baltimore. Within three blocks there is Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Afgahni, Italian, American fusion, and a number of other different cuisines. While this may be normal for DC, it is very exciting for Baltimoreans, members of a city more known for its drug and homicide rates rather then its food.

Dukem, an Ethiopian restaurant on 1100 Maryland Ave. is an impossibly crowded place that will definitely give the other ethnic restaurants competition. Ethiopian cuisine largely consists of interesting stews served on fluffy, pancake-like bread called injera. Generally the injera acts as the plate, and also as the method by which the food is conveyed to the mouth. One picks up some injera, scoops up some tasty lentils or lamb or beef stews, and pops the entire thing in the mouth.

At Dukem, the best option is to get the vegetarian or meat combination platters which give a little taste of everything. Particularly delicious are the lamb wot and beef tibs among the meats, and the spicy split lentil and shiro among the veggies. The food is spicy, though the degree tends to depend more on chance then anything. However, it is delicious, authentic, and the Kenyan beer, Tusker, is also not to be missed.

Dukem
1100 Maryland Ave
Baltimore, MD
410-385-0318

Coming Soon: Dinner Reviews from Baghdad

We've brought you DC-based bitching, Transit nerd ranting, food love, and Windy city rumors. Now, in our biggest challenge yet, Smorgasblog brings our most far-flung blog yet...from IRAQ!

The Smorgasblog media empire and our dozen or so unpaid writers would like to welcome a new member to the family:

PNG'd brings you the straight scoop from a highly anonymous and very funny worker in the Green Zone. Check him out.

Logan Tavern

While I was away, it seems Logan Circle became the happening place for restaurants. Or so the word on the street goes. High on the list of "must try" restaurants was Logan Tavern, with its reputation for home-style comfort foods, like fried chicken, mac 'n' cheese, and meatloaf. So, with high hopes for an 8 p.m. dinner on Saturday night, we made our way down to Logan Tavern, directly across from the Whole Foods on the corner of 14th & P St in Logan Circle -- or, as the real estate agents like to call it, Dupont East.

Logan Tavern was packed full on Saturday night. They don't take reservations for parties of less than 6, so upon our arrival, we spent about 45 minutes at the bar, drinking down incredibly alcoholic concoctions, like a Caipirinha that was all alcohol and almost no sugar, and a blueberry mojito, which had fresh blueberries floating it in but no blueberry taste. The restaurant is mostly booths, with a few large tables in the center.

We were seated at the front of the restaurant at a large booth. It took about 10 minutes before we were given bread and our drinks. In fact, the service throughout the evening was slow, although our waiter fully made up for it in character. The only thing our waiter had more of than tattoos were opinions, largely about the food. And, to be fair, he was right on all counts. Though we'd be recommended the "comfort foods" at Logan Tavern, we were quickly steered away. The fried chicken was, we were told, "boneless, skinless chicken breasts thrown in a deep fat fryer," and the meatloaf was "meatloaf, like you could make at home." Instead, he recommended we try the pork, the seafood stew, the steak, or the fish. If there's anything we've learned in our year and a half of food blogging, it's that when a waiter offers suggestions, you better listen.

We started our meal with two appetizers, Baby Back Ribs w. Honey-Hoisin Glaze and Buffalo Shrimp w. Blue Cheese Sauce . Both were fantastic. The ribs were succulent and the meat fell off the bone, as ribs should. The buffalo shrimp were large and the buffalo sauce was mixed together with cheese, creating a think sauce that was so good we got extra bread to dip in it. Through the rest of the meal was excellent, I'd say the appetizers are by far the best food in the house. Entrees all come with salad or soup, so we each had a house salad as our second course. The salad was fine but nothing spectacular and the soup didn't sound especially interesting.

For dinner, I had the pork chop special, an incredibly thick pork chop served with garlic mashed potatoes and apple sauce. The pork chop was excellent, as was the mashed potatoes. The apple sauce was, well, apple sauce. There's really not much you can do to apple sauce. I'd definitely recommend it. One of my dining companions had the Roasted Pork Loin in Sweet Asian Mustard on our waiter's recommendation and said it was divine. The other had the Grilled Salmon, which she said was great, too, although by that point her Caipirinha and wine had left her a bit tipsy, so I wouldn't trust her recommendations. We passed on dessert, although they looked incredible.

The only downside to the evening was the speed the food came out. It took a very long time between ordering and the delivery of the appetizers and an equally long time between the appetizers and the main course. Once they get those wrinkles worked out, though, I can see it being an excellent neighborhood restaurant.

Total bill for three people, including wine, two appetizers, and three mains, was about $110 before tip, not including our alcoholic concoctions before the meal.

Logan Tavern is part of another D.C. trilogy of restaurants, eatwelldc. The other two are Merkado Kitchen, directly next door, and Grillfish, at 1200 New Hampshire Avenue.

Logan Tavern
1423 P St. NW
Washington DC 20005

Baby steps

Well done to Kaz and Lockey of Australia who have just successfully created some serious baby!! As part of the future drinking Aussie population, here are my two favorite faux-alcohol drinks to get him started on. It’s never too early!

'No innuendo' banana daiquiri
Half a mashed ripe banana
One shot orange juice
A tsp lemon juice
Two tablespoons sugar
One shot water

Mix everything together and freeze. Fill a glass half full, and add sprite the rest of the way.

'Just hanging out' on the beach
One shot cranberry juice
One shot orange juice
One shot pineapple juice
One shot peach juice

Mix everything and pour it over crushed ice

Image blatently stolen from gothstuff.com

A little buffalo in your cup

Milk gets squirted out of a cow, whittled down to 2%, and poured into my tea. Or a bowl of cereal, or a batch of mac and cheese, but the point is, it comes from a large female cow and gets processed. But it doesn’t have to. In India, neither cow, nor processing are any part of what ends up in my Earl Grey, and it tastes fabulous. And why is that? Unpansteurized, Roamin’ Buffalo Milk.

This stuff is lower in cholesterol, has more proteins and minerals, and more lactoferrin, lysozyme,and lactoperoxidase than cow milk. And who doesn’t want more lactoperoxidase! But the best thing about buffalo-excretion is a lower water content. Remember how good it tastes when Thai restaurants use condensed milk? Now imagine that, but thicker. Incidentally, it’s what makes Buffalo Mozzarella so nifty.

But what about processing? Well, it isn’t, and that means that buffalo milk is so fatty and thick that you could practically stand a spoon up in it, the entire surface covered with globules like chicken soup.

My point here is a recent realization that all Chai I’ve ever had is wrong. Real Chai is thick and rich with fatty buffalo milk, not the thin, limp-tasting white-liquid-with-cinnamon that passes at Starbucks. But no fear! Here is how to thicken your chai, buffalo-style (without a handy buffalo)

Buffalo-esque Chai
Mix together a piece of cushed ginger, a crushed piece of cinnamon, a tablespoon peppercorns, a teaspoon of vanilla, 6 cloves, 2 tsp cardamom, 2 whole star anise, a tsp fennel seeds, a teaspoon aniseed, and half a tsp nutmeg.

Boil three cups of water and add 4 Assam teabags. Then add the spice mixture and simmer for 20 mins.

Now here’s the tough part. Add 3.5 cups of cows milk. Bring everything to a boil and then immediately turn down the heat. Then bring it to a boil again, and turn it down. Repeat that maybe 3 or 4 times and the result should be just as thick and creamy as if you were swimming in buffalos.

Sweeten it with honey, strain, and serve. Buffalo-rific

Nifty rosemary stuff

Not to be too Martha Stewart, but how great of an idea is this: Take a rosemary branch, rip off all the needles except a little tuft at the tip, and use the leftover aromatic stick as a skewer, like for kababs or something. Isn’t that the coolest idea in the world? Alright, I thought it was cool.

Update: Apparently everyone in the world knew this trick except for me

Stand Facing the Stove, and make some hamentaschen

Zaf should be sending out resumes in a desperate attempt to assuage her broke-ness. As is, she’s sitting in Soho eating leftover hamentaschen (is there anything better than leftover hamentaschen?) and reading ‘Stand Facing the Stove.’

This is a great book. It is a wordy book. It is a vastly over-researched book (10 years, says the intro). It is a loooong book. It is the story of how the Joy of Cooking, America’s first popular cookbook, was written. I am a quarter through and I’ve only just finished reading about the first writer’s great grandfather’s military service. This book manages to miss the fact that, even though it is possible to research every single breath taken by your subject during their life, you shouldn’t.

Even so, this book rocks! And incidentally, so do the hamentaschen. Here’s the recipe I used, done in the original 1930's Joy of Cooking style:

ZAF Hamentaschen
Amusingly ornamental, use these merry tart-letes to bring a degree of agreeable anarchy to a midday tea party or soirée (I swear I couldnt make this stuff up). Preheat oven to 375, then cream together:
...... 2/3 cup butter
...... 1/2 cup sugar
Add
...... 1 egg
And either
...... 1/4 cup orange juice
Or
...... 1/4 cups of water
That has been mixed with
...... 1 teaspoon of vanila
Gradually add
...... 2 cups of flour
Mix gently, but do not kneed, then refrigerate for three hours. Roll thin using process described on P. 134 for butter cookies. Place
...... 1 tablespoon of canned poppyseed filling
Or
...... 1 tablespoon of raspberry jam
In the middle of each circle. Fold up the sides to make a triangle, Squeeze the corners tightly. Bake for about 10 minutes or until golden brown

McWorld

Every American has said one of the following at some point:

‘In India , they must eat a lot of different veggie burgers, because, get this, they don’t eat cow!’
‘Hey, I hear the ones In Israel are Kosher’
‘Did you know they have wine at the ones in France! Wine!’

It’s important to say those lines as though this was the most outrageous thing to ever happen to food, for the different items served at McDonalds in other parts of the world is the stuff of rumor and legend

Perhaps it’s because McDonalds is such an American institution. The idea of an alternate menu is like Halloween-themed breakfast cereal. Cute, maybe even collectable, but ultimately viewed with amused condescension. Heh, those crazy French guys sure do like their wine.

Anyway, enough philosophy. Here is the definitive list of what those insanely crazy eaters in other countries would prefer with their fries:

Free Wednesday Morning Caffeine

Need your morning fix? Get it for free.

From 10 a.m. to 12 noon, Wednesday, March 15, most Starbucks will be hosting the first annual "National Coffee Break", giving away a free tall (12 oz, or small, to the rest of the world) cup of brewed coffee. WIth 62 Starbucks in D.C., you've got plenty of choice. In fact, if you're vigilant, you could probably hit up at least 15 or 20 of them during the two hours of free coffee. So go out and get your free caffiene dose!

Link from Starbucks Gossip.

Brazil Dreams

When I dream of Brazil, which is often, I think of deep fried pastries, thick bean stew, and gorgeous dark-haired chicks in the type of clothing I’d reserve for a FUD edible body-topping test (volunteers?). So it’s unfortunate that when Churrascaria of Rockville dreams about Brazil, they think of lumps of meat heated up till they turn brown.

A large dining room, where the décor can only be described as ‘eighties yacht club’, is the scene for this culinary oddity. For a surprisingly high price, each overawed soccer family and aging tourist gets all they can eat Braziliana: A large, lackluster buffet of cold pasta salad, canned corn, and dubious shellfish, and a hot one with traditional Brazilian fare like ‘lasagna’ and ‘oily chicken’.

But that’s alright because the real point of this meal is Meat Lumps. They're carried on long spits, three at a time or as whole steaks skewered through the middle. It floats by on barges, servers at the ready with knife and fork. Some of it is very nice. But the vast majority I found fatty, rubbery, and overcooked. A piece of wood painted red and green sits at each table. Green means bring on the roast beef, lamb kabab, and ribs, red means for the love of god, don’t.

Every once in a while, conversation stops so that the servers can sing happy birthday to a giggling Midwesterner. It’s that kind of restaurant, the kind that’s only one step away from the deadly ‘hi my name is Jen and I’ll be your server tonight’. I highly recommend it if you have an aging aunt from Minnesota. She’s sure to say things like ‘cute’ and ‘exotic’. Otherwise, I’m still at a loss to figure this place out at all.

Greenfield Churrascaria
1801 Rockville Pike
301 8813397

Who needs water?

I returned home from the gym around 3 o'clock this afternoon, eager for a shower after spending the day sweating. Unfortunately, I returned home and there was no water. Not "no hot water," mind you. No water.

No matter. Certainly this would get fixed before dinner time, meaning I can make pasta or do dishes or any of those normal Sunday kitchen-centered activities.

6:30 p.m. Still no water.

Time for plan B. Truth be told, making a dinner sans water isn't really that difficult, particularly if you have a well-stocked pantry. It just adds some urgency to the recipe I want to share with you.

Buffalo Chili: No Water Necessary

1 pkg ground buffalo (thank you, Wegman's)
An onion, chopped
some garlic, chopped
some red and green bell pepper, chopped
1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
a couple chipotles in adobo sauce, chopped
1 beer, dark (I added about half a beer to the recipe)
1 cup chicken broth
1 can crushed tomatoes
salt
pepper
cumin
chili powder
olive oil

Heat onions and garlic in oil for one minute. Add buffalo - cook until browned. Add peppers - cook briefly.

Throw in everything else, seasoning to taste. Cook on low until sauce is your desired consistency.

Easy enough. Who needs water, anyway? But washing dishes without good old H20? That's another story. Luckily,

7:20 p.m. Water returns.

Bluestate!

Have some coffee with your caffeine

I owe MAW a beer. Why should this be? Because last night in a moment of drunken musing I bet him that tea had more caffeine than coffee. So the real question is, why did I believe this odd piece of urban legend? I’m not sure, but it’s wrong wrong wrong.

Depending on where it’s from, tea has between 40 and 60 milligrams of caffeine. Now true, this is more than a coke (34) or a pepsi (37), but it’s less than your average drip coffee which comes in at up to a heart-racing 175 for the same sized cup. A can of Red Bull contains a paltry 80, despite being banned in France for it’s negative effects.

But what of milk, I hear you say. Popular notion says that it bonds with the caffeine and makes it less painful. Well, drinking milk can prevent caffeine-instigated bone loss, especially for the ladies, but I’m not sure where I heard the other stuff.

Anyway, it’s not true, and now I owe MAW a beer.

Go Out To Dinner Tonight!

You can tell we're just getting caught up on all things DC related, as we neglected to post about this:

Tonight is Dining Out For Life, where your dining dollars will benefit the fantastic Food & Friends organization. Go here for a list of participating restaurants, then go out and have a good diner, knowing you're lining the pockets of someone other than the restauranteurs. And let us know where you went and how the food was.

Where do you Wifi?

It came to my attention yesterday that we've been neglecting our list of great places to get coffee with wi-fi. Updates are forthcoming, but before we do so, we'd like to know what other places you know of with wireless (free or pay) in the DC area. Please add any suggestions either in the comments in this post or email us at dcfud.writers@gmail.com.

Brickskeller: The Place for a Beer...or Several

Somehow, in all our postings, DCFUD has neglected the best place drinking in DC: The Brickskeller. I'd say I'm unsure how we missed posting about The Brickskeller, but I'm fairly certain I know why. Everyone reading DCFUD knows about Brickskeller. In fact, everyone who has ever lived in NW DC knows about Brickskeller. It's the pub/restaurant (whith a heavy emphasis on pub) up on 22nd that holds the Guinness world record for most beers. And it's a great place to go when you want to have several very good and very large beers.

Brickskeller is an institution, but it's not quite like the normal drinking places in D.C. You don't generally go to Brickskeller for a drink. It's not akin to Mackey's or Sign of the Whale. In general, when you go to the Brickskeller, you're going for a night of drinking. You may say you're going for just one drink, but in four years of going, I've never succeed in ordering just one beer. Once you end up at the Brickskeller, you're not leaving until a) you've tried at least two beers you've never had before, b) you're worried about missing the last metro out, or c) they're closing the bar and threatening to chuck you next door into the Fireplace unless you pay your very large bar bill. In fact, my three largest bar bills (one of which topped $600, although it was on a company cc and involved 14 of us) have occured at Brickskeller.

So why do you go to Brickskeller? Two reasons:

1) The Beer. They really do have some of the best beer in the city. Check out zaf's favorite, the Dogfish Head Rasion D'etre, my new favorite, Schneider & Sohn Aventinus, or one of the hundreds of Mexican, Belgian, Chinese, Italian, Russian, or about eighteen other country's beers. Drink and be merry.

2) The Waitresses. I'm not sure how they do it, and it really can't be legal, but the Brickskeller has the most attractive waitresses in town. They are all very cute and they all know it, which makes spending $75 for beers for three people siginificantly less painful. Order a Dunkelweiss and you'll understand why.

So, next time you're looking for a real night of drinking -- no happy hours here -- head to the Brickskeller. It's a place to catch up with friends, have a couple of beers, and wander out at 3 a.m. wondering what the heck the Scandinavians put in their beer to make them worth $8.50 a bottle...and you'll always go back.

The Brickskeller Dining House and Down Home Saloon
1523 22nd St, NW
Washington, DC 20037

Image blatently borrowed from beerblog.motime.com.

Splenda hates puppies

Splenda has long been a mainstay on this blog for its humorous lawsuits and creepy medical effects. But what about Spenda, the Puppy Killer?

A number of sources have published undercover findings on the infamous ‘Huntingdon Life Sciences’ product testing company. If your’re an enviro-type, you might recognize the name from older allegations that staff there were incompetent, unnecessarily cruel, and drunk. Anyway, current rumors are that early testing of Splenda killed 12,800 animals including a whole lot of adorable puppies and monkeys, who apparently weren’t so adorable by the time they’d been force-fed Splenda and then... well, you know.

If you really want some of the gory details, here are a couple hippie sites trafficking in moral outrage. I warn, this really isn’t for anyone who’s just eaten. Or is about to eat. Or ever wants to eat again:

World Vegan News

An anti-Huntingdon page

Inside HLS. They don’t dig it, apparently

So all you people claiming that Splenda should not be used by the public until its effects were fully known, this is all your fault.

It’s vegetarian…and it's good?

Meat! It’s juicy and good! Meat! It’s yummy and thick! Meat! It’s meaty!

But that not withstanding, it is possible for vegetarian food to be great. No really! Otherwise, the entire southern half of India would starve. Alright, poor taste there, but seriously, it exists, and The Vegetable Garden in White Flint proves it. It’s vegan and it’s good

Not only is the menu at this place longer than a really really long line of sausages…all lined up, but the people are so unbelievably friendly that you’ll wish you were related. For appetizers I tried the cilantro roll, a mix of tofu, black mushrooms, and, yes, cilantro, and ex-fudder snh got the crispy black mushrooms. Imagine the crunchiest, sweetest General Tso’s you’ve ever had, but with musky strips of fungus instead of gooey poultry parts.

For mains, there was tofu disguised as duck with crunchy greens, and a hot-pot of silky eggplant with chunks of ginger and basel. I tried the smooth sweet potato pie for desert, snh had rhubarb. Both were perfect, but admittedly it’s a lot easier to make those vegan than the chocolate mousse pie (made with soft tofu).

I practically rolled out of here confident that my culinary karma was at least momentarily safe. The Vegetable Garden advertises as vegetarian, vegan, organic, and macrobiotic. So if macrobiot is on your diet, this is the place for you.

The Vegetable Garden
11618 Rockville Pike
301 468 9301

Appetite, Interrupted

Who has not tasted the salty anticlimax of an appetite unfulfilled? General consensus would answer this question with ‘the loyal clients of Lindy’s Red Lion’ in Foggy Bottom. But is it true? I ventured to test the hypothesis with an afternoon burger.

The bar and upstairs has the usual ‘best burger’ propaganda and signed photos that are required by law at all burger joints, and the chairs and tables are reassuringly cramped. In fact, it has all the hallmarks of a great food find: sprawls of yuppies toasting the weekend with cheap beer, tough world-hardened waitresses, and highschoolers from Minnesota who have wandered in by mistake.

What it doesn’t have is good burgers. When my defeated-looking basket arrived, the tiny meat patty reminded me of the Midwestern highschoolers, cold, thin, and greasy. The dusty sponge of a bun flopped limply on the side, and my guacamole had been forgotten by an overworked kitchen.

Now, it’s true that I was hungry as only great expectations can make you. So imagine my unhappiness when on top of taste issue, I then spent the next half hour at a Starbucks table trying not to be ill. Man, I leave the city for one year and look what happens.