Scandinavian Drinks, People, and Music; You Know You Want To Come!

It's time to dance to Abba and drink Icelandic Beer. Where? At Hej Hej, of course.

Join our favorite DJs at Hej Hej tonight, Tuesday, September 25th, for a night of Scandinavian pop & rock.

Where: Gate 54 @ Cafe Saint-Ex
When: 10 PM - close
Cover? No cover!

DJs Natalya and Melissa spin music from Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Denmark including The Concretes * Shout Out Louds, The Raveonettes * The Knife * Jens Lekman * Peter Bjorn & John * Annie * Bjork * The Hives * Tigerbombs * The Lovekevins * Figurines * and many more.

Drink specials on Viking beer and Reyka vodka all night!

Check out the Hej Hej site at www.hejhejmusic.com and come on out tonight.

We'll see you all there!

Italian food from a Street Cart in Ballston

I remember watching an episode of the original Iron Chef a few years back and being impressed by a challenger who operated an Italian food cart out of a Buddhist temple in Japan. Well, we apparently have Italian food carts here as well. I happened to pass through Pupatella's release party this weekend. They had closed, but they still gave me a sample of tiramisu, and it was fabulous.

Pupatella is open Monday through Friday 730am-2:30pm, so if you work in Ballston, give it a try.

Kam Fong RIP

On Christmas day two years ago about a dozen members of a local social group met for dinner at Kam Fong in Chinatown before attending a Matisyahu concert at the 930 Club. Several of us still hang out regularly, and we ate at Kam Fong about 2 weeks ago. We were the last table on the restaurant's last night.

So...Kam Fong, thanks for the memories, and thanks for all the beef chow fun with Chinese vegetable I've eaten over the last couple of years. I'll miss the shock value of telling people to meet me at the restuarant next to CVS that has ducks hanging from their necks in the window.

As for those of us who originally met at that restaurant, and were there for the restaurant's last meal...it was a powerful moment...that we will remember.

Sopa de La Mancha

Now that the weather is starting to turn cool, I’ve been thinking about earthier flavors and darker colors. And soups. I know that there’s a soup for any weather, but except for gazpacho, I want nothing to do with the stuff in summer. But recently I was treated to another Spanish soup, which is in my mind a perfect fall dish. I don’t know what it’s really called, but the friend who made it claims this to be “something I learned from my nan” says it’s from Don Quixote’s own La Mancha region of Spain. Why a Spanish girl calls her grandmother ‘nan’ is anyone’s guess.

Here’s the recipe:

4 cups beef stock
4 eggs
2 tbs olive oil
4 large peeled cloves of garlic
4 slices stale country breads (We used cibatta, which was good but maybe something more sour would be better)
4 tbs paprika
¼ tsp ground cumin

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees (F), and set out four oven-safe bowls.

In a saucepan, fry whole peeled garlic cloves in the oil until they are golden; set them aside. Fry your bread until it’s golden and set that aside too. Now, add 1 tablespoon of the paprika to the pot, let it fry a few seconds, and then add the rest of the paprika, cumin, and stock. Let it get hot but not quite boiling.

Crush your garlic with a spoon, and it back to the pot, along with some salt and pepper. Cook 5 minutes over medium heat. While that’s happening, break the bread up into bits into the bowls - one slice each.

Ladle the hot soup into the bowls (I recommend having them on a tray or something that you can put into the oven - it makes transportation easier). Break an egg into each bowl, and put the lot in the oven for about 3 minutes, until the eggs are set.

Enjoy!

Peanut Vargoli (Tindora) with Tofu

Continuing my adventures with strange vegetables from the farmers market, this week I noticed an older Indian woman being very excited to her shopping companions over a pile of small, gherkin-shaped vegetables labeled “Tindora.” My curiosity piqued, I asked her what they were and how to cook them. Her reply was that she called them “Vargoli” - the Hindi to Gujarati’s “Tindora” and the English “Ivy Gourd” - and that she sliced them and stir-fried them with mustard seed, cumin and turmeric; her companion added that ground peanuts were a good garnish. They also suggested that I pick only long skinny ones, and if any turned out to be orange inside, I shouldn’t use them.

With all this in mind, I picked myself a bag of little gourds to take home with a fresh turmeric root and a brick of firm tofu. At home, I added my own ideas to the mix, and this is what I used:

About 20 ivy gourds/tindoras/vargolis;
1 block of firm tofu, well drained and cut to cubes;
1 root of fresh turmeric;
About 1/2 tsp each cumin seeds and mustard seeds;
Peanut oil;
Organic/all-natural creamy peanut butter;
Mirin;
Sriracha;

While the tofu drained, I cut the ends off of and quartered each gourd and heated up my cast iron pan with a drizzle of peanut oil.

Reducing the heat to medium, I added the cumin and mustard seeds, letting them bounce around under my splatter screen until they were brown. I then added more oil, grated in about an inch of turmeric, and added the gourds and some sriracha. I stir-fried all this for a few minutes, not letting the gourd get totally soft. I removed it to a bowl.

Adding more oil to the pan, as well as another sprinkle of seeds and turmeric, I fried the tofu until it was nice and crispy on the outside, but still smushy on the inside. Then I removed that to another bowl.

While the tofu cooked, I put about a tablespoon of peanut butter, 2 tablespoons mirin, and 1 tsp sriracha into a small glass, which I microwaved for 20 seconds and mixed into a paste. I added more oil and a bit of water to make it more liquidy.

I then added all three pieces together in a large bowl, tossing the peanut sauce all over. The gourd itself has a mild flavor, not unlike a cucumber bur more sour and less … green tasting. It was really delicious with the peanut sauce. The tofu was, of course, tofu, and absorbed all the flavors like the good little sponge it is. Overall, this was a very tasty dinner which, at least partially due to my laziness and consequent lack of rice, was really quite healthy too!

Atlanta's Coffee Deficit, Continued: A Ray of Hope

I recently got around to trying JavaVino in the “Poncey-Highlands” neighborhood of town: they have coffee; they have wine; what could be bad? The wine list pretty respectable - $5-7 gets you a good glass, but I didn’t try all the options (which change regularly), so there’s potential greatness. They also do wine tastings on 2nd Sundays, which I plan to attend one of these days.

We are here, however, to discuss the coffee shop aspect of JavaVino. My $2.10 jumbo-sized Americano (4 shots!!) was delicious - smooth, woody and not too bitter with a crema, I notice, so sturdy that it survived pouring over ice. I drank it straight - no sugar, no cream - a rare honor I reserve for really good coffee. JavaVino’s website indicates that their organic, sustainably-grown coffee actually comes from the owner’s family’s own plantation in Nicaragua - a neat detail, I think, especially since the results are so good.

The $7 hummus plate comes with roasted red peppers and a few unremarkable olives, as well as cibatta (a nice departure from the traditional pita). The hummus itself is OK, but could use salt (I see none available) and perhaps more sesame oil in the mix.

The location is a bit off the beaten path, but close enough to get some foot traffic, and parking is pretty ample. Seating is limited and the place, while pretty and pleasant, is a bit cluttered. The music (sort of ‘soft’ top-40 stuff) is a good volume, and large windows provide ample natural light, even if the view is just of parking lots. Free wifi service makes it theoretically work-friendly, but let’s be honest: you’re just watching YouTube.

JavaVino has a patio, but it is small and right out by the smoggy street, so it doesn’t really interest me, especially in the absence of much good people-watching/street antics (other than the Atlanta drivers, who form a genre of tragicomedy all their own). Besides awesome coffee and available wines, JavaVino has two characteristics desperately lacking in other Atlanta coffeeshops I’ve found: they sell real newspapers (as in, not just AJC and USAToday), and are open till midnight. It’s not all night, but a fair time to stop caffeinating in public.

JavaVino
579 N Highland Ave,
Atlanta, Ga, 30307
(404) 577-8673

L'Academie, Week 7: Eggs

(Watch out--the first five words of this article are boring, but it gets better from there.)

Health department regulations state that (See? I told you.) real hollandaise sauce must be re-made every hour at restaurants to prevent food poisoning. While this prevents you from contracting salmonella poisoning, it also means that most restaurants just use a hollandaise sauce mix in their eggs benedict instead of going to all the trouble to constantly remake the real stuff during the brunch rush. Here's how to make Hollandaise Sauce yourself, at home, in your PJs, for less trouble than you'd take to find a parking space near a good brunch place on a Sunday morning.

Separate the whites and yolks of a bunch of eggs. (Three eggs per person is plenty, and you'll have leftovers.) Do this by cracking them a flat surface, not a corner, which will drive pointy bits into the white. Let the yolk settle into one half of the shell and let the white fall out. Pour from one half-shell to the other--carefully--until the white is mostly gone. Pour the yolks into a metal bowl.

Whisk the yolks furiously until they are the consistency of cake batter. This takes awhile, so make sure you have spent the night with someone who is willing to do half the work for breakfast. They should be slightly lighter yellow than unwhisked yolks. Put the bowl over a pot of lightly simmering water (but not touching the water) and leave it there to keep warm, but not cook the yolks. Now slowly pour in some lemon juice (roughly two easy squeezes from a lemon half, I'd say) while still whisking rapidly to emulsify it. Whisk in some warm, melted butter the same way; clarified is good, but not necessary. Keep whisking until it is a consistency you want to eat, and add some cayenne if you want.

Next up: Grains! (Yawn. But I'll tell you how to make coconut sticky rice.)

You know you want to be the next Myspace...uh...TVFN star!

Cmon...you know you want to upload an audition tape to TVFN's Next Food Network Star Myspace Page!

I wonder if they will like my concept for "Dumpster Diving Cooking"? ;) Ok...maybe not!

Dad's Backyard Burgers - A FUD Snipe Hunt

Video gamers of a certain vintage remember the thrill of playing "Duke Nukem 3D" back in the mid-Nineties. Aliens have invaded Los Angeles, and, as Duke, your job is to kill every single pixilated alien and mutant in town. Duke was based not-too-loosely on Bruce Campbell's "Ash" in the Evil Dead movies, and various lines from the movies appeared in the game. The game was respected in that genre for its varied scenery and backgrounds, its goofy sense of humor, and the implementation of strategy and stealth rather than just a quick trigger finger.

Like anything else that becomes successful in Los Angeles, a sequel was planned. 3D Realms, Duke's programmers, announced in 1997 that "Duke Nukem Forever" would come out in the next year. The video game trade magazines fought for exclusive looks at the highly-anticipated game. Fanboys debated the pros and cons of various graphics technologies the game would incorporate. Players salivated over screen shots and game trailers like Atkins' Dieters at a steakhouse.

In the past ten years, Duke Nukem Forever has been delayed more than a smoking Green Line train. Countless technology changes, programmers coming and going, different publishing houses getting involved, and, by 2007, there's still no playable, purchasable Duke Nukem Forever. The official stance is that the game will come out "when it's done;" this, in an industry where other companies like Electronic Arts can turn out new versions of Madden football and Tiger Woods golf every year.

Over in nearby Merrifield, Virginia, there's a restaurant version of "Duke Nukem Forever." Dad's Backyard Burgers, located by Pilin Thai and ZPizza on Gallows Road has been tempting burger lovers for a couple of years with its signs declaring that Dad will be coming soon.

Apparently, we are the collective Telemachus while Dad Odysseus is off fighting the Trojans. Logic would dictate that if folks like Roberto Donna and Jose' Andres can open new restaurants and relocate existing ones in a matter of months, surely a simple burger joint in the `burbs shouldn't take more than a few weeks to open, right?

Who are the Trojans keeping Dad adrift? Or did Dad's visit to Circe result in a cannibalistic, yet unlimited supply of bacon cheeseburgers? The folks on Chowhound found this plan by the Virginia DOT to redo that busy intersection at Gallows and Lee Highway, effectively putting an access road through the middle of the fry vat. Still, just because V-DOT has a plan for those roads, that hasn't stopped other businesses in the affected strip (Carvel, 7-11, Pizza Hut, plus the others previously mentioned) from operating. Perhaps Dad's business name was a little too close for comfort for the folks at Backyard Burgers.

I drive by that intersection about once a month, and every once in a while, there's a little slice of activity at Dad's. The brown paper that had covered the windows was pulled back, exposing a few small tables and home-style wallpaper. The cash registers look brand new, and blueprints rest on the counter, and other than some finishing work, the place looks like it could open in a couple of days. But the Help Wanted sign offers a phone number that has been disconnected, and no forwarding number is provided.

Hopefully the folks behind Dad's Backyard Burgers will see this, plus the threads on Chowhound, and let us know their side of the story.