Free Chili Day!

The Hard Times Cafe is offering a free bowl of chili all day today. We thought folks might like to know.

Hard Times Cafe
3028 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA
(703) 528-2233

Diagrammatic Chicken

Recipes are a funny thing. Some people live by them - they read and follow every instruction to the letter, obsessing over how many salt grains are in a “pinch” (is that the same as a “Pinch”?) or if a splash is more than one shake of the soy sauce bottle. Then there are people like my great-grandmother, who are probably aware that “teaspoon” has a specific definition, but wouldn’t admit it if asked.

I’m somewhere in between: I like recipes in theory, but am a bit inconsistent at actually using them once in the kitchen. It’s always nice to have some idea what you’re going to need from the store, and how long it’s likely to take, but once the cooking starts, I tend to let go of what’s written down in favor of what flavors or textures or colors strike me just then. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s a disaster. Other people generally don’t hear about the latter, and that is not about to change.

But this is all subject to a bias, generated by how recipes have always been presented to me: a list of ingredients and instructions, neatly indented and punctuated, with notes in the margins and certain words circled or crossed out and written over. Upon seeing the image above on BoingBoing last week, I couldn’t resist.

First of all, it’s beautiful. Second of all (assuming there’s not much missing from the translations), it does just what I want a recipe to do: it gives me an idea, easily subjected to my own moods and whims. In deference to that concept, I’ll only give the highlights of my version.

I used all the ingredients in the diagram (except duck, I only had chicken), plus some tapioca starch. For the “1 cup sauce” I used about 3/4 cup soy sauce, and the rest was mostly Sriracha and some lime juice.

I fried the spices in sesame oil till they were fragrant, then added the chicken and, after a couple of minutes, my shitakes. After a while I added the sauce and beer (I used Kirin Ichiban, because it’s what I had), and when the chicken was cooked I thickened it with the starch.

I served it over white hominy, because I was too lazy to make rice, and that actually worked really well. It was a bit salty (maybe less soy sauce and more beer next time), but really delicious.

Any brilliant artists out there who want to make me very happy are encouraged to paint some recipes after this fashion - my kitchen has plenty of empty wall space!

The Lion in the Hotel

A couple of days before Valentine's Day, I took a date to Coeur De Lion in the Henley Park Hotel. It is a pretty little restaurant off to the side of the main bar. Yes, yes, I usually write about ethnic restaurants and dives – but not this time.

It was a cold, rainy night, and we were running early, so we hung out with some guests in the room to the right side of the front desk. That fireplace felt good. Then, off to the restaurant.

The service was very good, with Jamal (our waiter) spending some time with us without overdoing it. He did help us select the food and wine.

I ordered the jumbo shrimp as an appetizer. The chili flavored prawns were sitting on a pile of hummus. The lemon oil gave the dish a nice flavor. The strip steak with Yukon gold mashed potatoes, Vidalia onions, and baby spinach was cooked correctly (medium) and had a flavorful red wine sauce. The steak was actually huge; I only got through half of it.

My date was happy with the grouper with mushroom risotto and a salad. Ok…we did pick the wine to go with her dish. I drank Riesling with steak…I'll never get my food snob license now. ;)

We shared the seasonal fruit (which happened to be mixed berries with mint leaves) and the cheesecake with mango sauce. The berries were sweet and refreshing, and the cheesecake was fluffy, like a mousse.

Appetizers are $8-13, entrees are mostly in the $30's, and desserts are $8. We drank a bottle of Dr. Loosen 2006 Germany Riesling ($9 a glass and $28 a bottle).

With wine, it was about $120 for two. Ok…I'll admit it; I won the dinner at an event a few months ago. So, I cashed in my gift certificate and we had a great dinner in a fancy restaurant. You can't go wrong with that. But, yes I recommend the restaurant even if you are paying for your meal.

Coeur De Lion, in the Henley Park Hotel.

926 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington D.C. 20001
202-638-5200

Quick Lemongrass Chicken

Lemongrass is a great spice. It can be used in warm, soothing dishes as well as it can be in cold refreshing and hot jarring ones. I love to use it as a way of brightening up a recipe, much as I'd use lemon juice, although without the acidity or extra liquid. This dish is one I've been making, in one form or another, for many years - it's fast, easy, and pretty healthy.

Because this is a dish that's best made a bit thrown-together, everything here is approximate, and everyone should adjust to their own tastes and moods.

What you need:

1 3/4 chicken breast, cut into strips
1 tbs. garlic (minced)
1 tbs lemongrass, diced small
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs rice wine (or cheap red, if that's what you've got)
2 serrano peppers, diced
Fresh basil

What you do:

Heat some oil to medium-high in a wok, and add the garlic and lemongrass, stirring until very fragrant. Then, add the chicken and let cook until it's about 3/4 done, about 3 minutes. Now, raise the heat to high and add your sauces and peppers, stir-frying for about a minute. Lower heat back to medium, and cook until the sauce is reduced about 80%.

Serve hot over rice, and garnish with basil leaves.

(Image from wiki-images)

Kung-Pao Style Chicken for One

The one downside to living alone is that cooking for one can be a real challenge. Most recipes serve more than one, and ingredients don’t always come in easily-subdivided groupings. Here’s a recipe I quite like that makes one serving, for which I use chicken breasts which I keep in single freezer bags.

It’s based off of what a friend of mine does for her family, but scaled down and modified to suit my tastes.

This is what you need:

1 chicken breast cut in 1-inch bits
2 baby bok choys, chopped up
1/3 of a yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger
2 Serrano peppers, diced
A handful of roasted peanuts
Another handful of peanuts, ground up
2 tbs rice wine (or marsala)
1.5 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp tapioca starch (or corn if you prefer)
Mirin
Sugar
Sesame oil.

Cut everything up, and make your sauce: mix the wine, soy sauce, half the peppers and garlic, and a splash of mirin in a glass, and set it aside.

Now, get your wok going over medium-high heat, and add a couple tablespoons of oil. Add the ginger and the peppers and garlic not in your sauce, and stir for 30 seconds. Add the chicken, stir around, and let cook for a couple of minutes, until it’s about half done. Now add your onions, and when they begin to get translucent, your bok choy and whole peanuts.

Dump in your sauce, adding a bit more oil if you need it. Add the ground nuts and toss that all together, and let cook about a minute. Meanwhile, dissolve your starch in warm water. Now reduce the heat to medium and stir in the starch-water slurry. This will thicken the sauce. Adjust your seasonings to taste (I usually add a bit of Sriracha, because I love it), and serve hot over rice.

Raising Arizona (and then eating it)

My mother moved to Phoenix this past October, lured by the dramatically cheaper real estate, warmer climate and chance for a natural tan in January. I finally got a chance to visit The Five Paragraph Bitter Food Mom this past week, and lived out the Paul Simon classic, Mother and Child Reunion, just without the Chinese food. I was hoping to get some quality Southwestern or even Native American food; Mom figured she'd use me as excuse to try places in her new area. With the Super Bowl being held this weekend in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, and one of our local sportswriters recovering from a heart attack (get well soon!), Arizona is in the press. Here's my recent four-day eating guide to the newest of the Lower 48 states.

Our first meal was at Black Angus Steakhouse, a place she'd heard good reviews from her coworkers, but had yet to try herself. Black Angus is a regional chain that (thankfully) has not migrated further east than Colorado and New Mexico. The food was mediocre and the portions were massive - the culinary equivalent of speaking louder to a foreigner who doesn't speak English. Given the praise at Mom's work, I'd be willing to grant that maybe we caught it on a bad night, but the prime rib was more like a sub-prime mortgage - I'd need the Government's help to get out from under that thing. Mom's steak was tougher than a Navy SEAL. Arizona cuisine was not starting off well.

We swung by a couple of grocery stores near her house. The first was Fry's Marketplace. Tech geeks who've been out West know of the legendary Fry's Electronics stores - many of them are the size of shopping malls and are loaded with all sorts obscure computer parts. While the two Fry's are run by entirely different companies, the Marketplace version of their food stores mirror the spirit of their electronics' namesakes by stocking a ridiculously varied amount of products. Fresh produce, locally-supplied beef and a well-stocked deli may not be anything special, but any grocery store with a full Tully's Coffeeshop, patio furniture section and several rows of vacuum cleaners is kind of unique. The prices were about 5 to 10% less than what we pay out here at a Safeway or Wegman's, but the noticeable exception was the seafood - about 25% more. If you want fresh seafood in Arizona, you're gonna pay.

The next grocery store we went to was A.J.'s, a Phoenix-centric chain similar to a Dean and Deluca or Sutton Place Gourmet/Balducci's. The place drips with a mix of Napa Valley class and Southwestern cool. Rows and rows of wine, spirits and microbrews are placed next to a large high-end cafeteria section. AJ's prime rib looked a lot better than the refried Barbaro I had the night before. A small outdoor dining area offers gourmet burgers and Mexican snacks next to a bakery that looks like a diabetic's nightmare - freshly made donuts, cheesecakes, petit-fours, butter cakes. Mom's sweet tooth took over, and we bought a sampling of their wares, while I enjoyed a prickly pear juice ice tea. The desserts were definitely on the too-sweet side, but they sure did look nice. I'm curious if they tailor their recipes to the influx of snowbirds coming down from Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa this time of year with their love of overly-sweet foods.

That night we ate at a local family Italian place, Cucina Tagliani. They have three locations on the west side of the metro area, and are the kind of fun, reasonably priced Italian places we don't seem to have out here much anymore. The portions were generous, the prices were fine, and the food was quite good. I had the house specialty, the Pasta Tagliani - chicken, bacon, prosciutto, broccoli sautéed with garlic oil, with fettuccine alfredo. I ordered the small size and didn't dare finish it, as it appeared to be a heart attack on the plate, but it was well worth it. Unique to Tagliani's is their offering of low-carb pasta options - whole wheat pasta, spinach dishes, spaghetti squash, roasted vegetables. However, any illusions to Dr. Atkins were thrown out the window when Mom ordered a massive slice of a raspberry and chocolate mascarpone cake.

Once we hit the road to tour the state from the Grand Canyon to the Mexico border, we saw that Arizona is much more than strip malls and golf courses. Sedona, Bisbee, Flagstaff - all are areas much more scenic and interesting than expected. As for the Grand Canyon itself - no movie, no documentary, no painting, no picture - nothing at all can adequately describe the amazing mix of colors, geology and weather located in that park. It's easy to see why it's one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world. The small town near the South Rim entrance has a couple of fast food places, an overpriced (but tasty) pizza parlor but nothing to get excited about. However, the dining options in Flagstaff were much more reasonable. It's an Old West railroad stop with a downtown full of pubs, grills and theaters, and the Northern Arizona University makes sure that plenty of cultural opportunities are around. In fact, I just missed G. Love and Special Sauce, and tickets are on sale for an upcoming Pink Martini show. We found the Old Town Shops in Flagstaff, full of funky boutiques, a spa, and two great little places - Bigfoot BBQ and Brookside Chocolates. Nothing prepares you for a hike through the Canyon than overdosing on beef brisket, ribs and chocolate-caramel covered apples. The snow-capped peaks of the San Francisco Mountains to the north provide a great backdrop for a nice day spent in a charming little town.

The next day, we traveled south through Tucson to Tombstone, Ft. Huachuca and Bisbee. Pretty much anybody who's ever watched a Western has heard of Tombstone, the town "Too Tough To Die." While I've never been a huge fan of the whole "Cowboys and Indians" genre, I did get a kick from walking through the O.K. Corral and seeing all the gunfight reenactments. There is a certain romance that clings to names like Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, and Tombstone cashes in on this by keeping the old town center looking like it did 100 years ago. However, it's less of a historic area and more of a tourist trap, almost like Gettysburg. Mom was prepared, though - instead of getting ice cream in Tombstone, she got some Dairy Queen in Benson, AZ, on the way there. Still, if you're inclined, you can get pub food at the same saloon that some of the West's most colorful characters patronized.

Down the road about 30 miles away is Bisbee, an old mining town about 20 minutes north of the Mexico border. Nestled high up in the mountains, it looks a lot like old Ellicott City, Maryland, or Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. The mine has long closed, and the area is now mostly an art commune full of young and old hippies and food co-ops. Bisbee used to have that wild-n-woolly reputation of Tombstone, but is now unofficially sloganed "The Town Too High to Care." The high altitude keeps the temperatures much more reasonable than in Tucson, about 100 miles away...and I certainly detected smells of patchouli and incense associated with other definitions of "high."

One of my old California friends recently moved there, and I can see why. The people were nice, friendly, but not disgusting about it. They were all just...cool. Plus, you can walk to almost everything in Old Bisbee. The Bisbee Coffee Company is everything an indie coffee shop should be - warm, inviting and offering really good coffee. Mom and I both tried their in-house brews; mine topped with spicy Mexican cinnamon and her following with a fudge brownie chaser. After one bite, she looked at me, thought of our family's long and proud baking heritage stretching from our roots in Pennsylvania to our German ancestors, and humbly said "this is the best brownie I've ever had." I took a small bite, and was hard-pressed to disagree. Good coffee and great baked goods? Combined with the Bisbee Grille in the same plaza building, it made for a nice little trip. You rock on, Bisbee.

As a self-proclaimed burger nut, no trip to the American Southwest is complete without a stop at an In-n-Out Burger. My brief stint working in Los Angeles turned me into an In-n-Out junkie, and I was hardly alone in my jonesin'. There's a reason why Five Guys and Elevation Burger cook their burgers like they do - they mirror In-n-Out's way of cooking burgers to order. Yeah, you wait a couple of minutes extra, but after trying one, you'll consider it time well spent. As my mom's as much of a burger fan as me, it was fun introducing her to a new addiction.

Our last day was spent in a form of detox - lots of water and salad. I had forgotten how powerful mom's sweet tooth is, and I was not used to so much sugar running through my veins. After touring the Biltmore Arizona (I do love me the Frank Lloyd Wright), we ended up checking out Arizona Mills, the much-smaller cousin to Potomac and Arundel Mills in our region, to get some shopping done. I grabbed a couple of souvenirs and walked past KuKuRuZa, a store offering freshly-prepared gourmet popcorn mixes, a sort of Cold Stone Creamery/popcorn hybrid. Flavors like "s'mores" and "cappuccino caramel" might have whetted my appetite at a different time, but something else caught my eye - a kiosk had margarita-flavored gelato made with Patron.

I'll let that sink in - margarita-flavored gelato made with Patron.

I had to have a sample; and it was like I had the best-tasting frozen margarita ever. Creamy, smooth, but with that familiar kick. You can definitely taste the Patron - the clerk said that a lot of the alcohol is removed, but there's still plenty in each serving. I could believe it. Don't know if they serve it in a cactus glass with a salted rim, but, I now have a new recipe to try to figure out. Why has that not come East yet? I like gelato fine, but it's always "tiramisu-this" or "black cherry-that" or "spumante-surprise."

Our last meal on this vacation was at Sweet Tomatoes, a soup-and-salad bar that would be fairly unremarkable except for the fact that their soups are legitimately good. These are not reconstituted cafeteria soups from school, but hearty meals-in-a-bowl made with really fresh ingredients. The chicken noodle had large chunks of white breast meat and dark thigh meat, the vegetarian chili looked like it could pass muster in Texas, and the Congressional Bean Soup was a fairly good interpretation of a Capitol Hill classic.

I'm planning on going back to Phoenix in the fall, though only after I come down from the sugar high…and the Bisbee high.

If you're curious, I'll be posting pictures of the trip on my Picasa page.

Eastern Ingenuity Meets Western Laziness

I bought one of those pre-prepped bags of broccoli and cauliflower and carrots at the grocery store the other day, because it was on sale and because I love veggies and because I am lazy. At home, I noticed that on the back of the bag there was a recipe for a vegetable curry, using the contents of the bag, and other similarly-branded ingredients. I didn’t have most of those other things handy, and also the recipe didn’t look very good. But the idea's seeds were sewn.

Days later, at the Asian market, I came upon the aisle of canned curry mixes and powders. When an older lady speaking what sounded like Thai to her cell phone grabbed about four cans of Bright brand (Thai) Green Curry, I decided to try it. I’ve been steered horribly wrong before, but more often than not this is a good way of picking between brands you don’t know. I also picked up a few other ingredients and, for reasons not entirely clear even to me, later (at the farmers market) decided to buy buffalo instead of beef or chicken meat.

I ended up with the following:

- 2 cans green curry ( FYI: it has coconut milk and bamboo shoots and kefir leaves already in it, if you’re making your own)
- 1 large fresh Serrano pepper (about 1.5 tbs chopped)
- 1 stalk fresh lemongrass
- 1 lb. of mixed broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots
- 1 medium yellow onion
- 1.5 pounds buffalo top round
- Fish sauce
- Dry roasted peanuts

Back home, I got to work: I diced the onion and Serrano, chopped about 2 tbs of the lemongrass (slice into thin circles, then quarter), rinsed the veggies, trimmed the meat, and cut it into 3/4 - inch cubes. I got out my biggest pot, and first browned the meat a little bit. Then, I lowered the heat to medium and added olive oil, followed by about half of the chilies and lemongrass. After this was all nice and warm and fragrant, I stirred in the onions. I let them cook about 5 minutes, till a bit translucent but not all the way.

At that point, I added the veggies, and both cans of curry, about 3 tbs of fish sauce, and the remaining spices. I also added sriracha, but then again I like things hot. I upped the temperature as well, to medium-high, and let the curry simmer and reduce, stirring only once in a while, until everything was the right texture. It was, at this point, still a little watery for me, so I mixed a big teaspoon of tapioca starch in a quarter-cup of water, and stirred that into the curry to thicken it.

I am, it should be known, a bit lax in my advanced planning and very prone to forgetting to do things. Like, say, to buy rice at the store. Or to think about boiling pasta before the rest of my meal is nearly ready. Luckily, I am aware of my own, err, idiosyncrasies, and stock my shelves accordingly. It turns out that canned white hominy is easy and fast to warm, and actually makes a nice substitute for rice.

I garnished the dish with the peanuts, which I ground with mortar and pestle, which I think was a key factor in making this dish delicious. Without it, the buffalo was too much of a random flavor - the peanuts helped to integrate it all together. Plus, I love peanuts.