Some Tidbits

It's not like I haven't been out to dinner lately... I just haven't written about the experiences. I did actually cook last week.

Three friends had birthdays within a week of each other, so seven of us got together at Luca in Locust Point. We had a nice dinner there a few weeks ago, but the experience was ruined by some totally classless trashy drunk 20-something girl who had the most shriekingly loud voice.

We had the owner move us because the drunk was so distracting. They were very gracious to us and asked her to pipe down, which she didn't do. I fault them for not asking her to leave, since other patrons were complaining, and when we finished dinner and came back downstair, she was throwing back shooters. Yep... her mother would have been proud. As we say in my house, classy with a K.

Luca's doesn't have a website, but they're owned by the same family who owns Matthews on Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown. The restaurant is two levels, the bar and some tables on the first floor and a nice open second floor with lots of windows and tables. At the b-day dinner, we had the entire second floor to ourselves, luckily.


We started with a pesto and crab dip, which we polished off - and we ordered two servings! One of the birthday boys wanted his favourite drink, a Purple Mother, so we asked the waiter, and he obliged... after looking up the recipe on Google. Should you ever be foolish enough to think you might want to try one, here's the recipe. To my mind, it tasted like cough medicine.
Three bottles of wine later, and after some very nice entrees, none of which I can remember, including mine, it was time for the cake. I'd taken the afternoon off from work to make this, and the warm weather and kitchen took its toll on the buttercream icing. The cake was a plain white cake, and I made a double recipe so I would be able to have six layers. I cut each layer in half and spread raspberry jam on each layer. I used the buttercream recipe on the side of the Domino Sugars box. I did use Kerrygold butter for the icing. I became sadly addicted to Kerrygold in Wales, and I love being able to find it here.
I tinted the icing a pale yellow for the crumb layer and the main layer of icing. Then I added more red and yellow food colouring to make a deeper orange. I piped stars on in a circular pattern, making the icing darker as I got to the center.

Raspberry & Eggplant

Our lovely friend, and fellow Baltimore blogger and Food Show panelist, Roopa Kalyanaraman, aka Raspberry & Eggplant was mentioned in Mark Bittman's Minimalist column in the New York Times today! He even featured one of her recipes!

I generally don't read the Dining In/Dining Out section of the Times, but this article was about microwave cooking... Something made me read until the end, because that's where the mention was. Way to go, Roopa!

Here's Roopa's recipe for South Indian Eggplant Curry.
Time: 15 minutes

2 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon chickpea flour
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
Dash of asafetida
3 tablespoons unsweetened shredded coconut
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
2 teaspoons tamarind paste
1 large or 2 medium eggplant
Chopped fresh cilantro leaves for garnish.

1. In a bowl, mix oil, chickpea flour, turmeric and asafetida. Heat on high for 90 seconds, stopping to stir halfway through. In another bowl, heat coconut on high for 90 seconds, stirring halfway through. Add coconut, ginger, salt and tamarind to chickpea mixture.

2. Rinse and dry eggplant, trim off ends, and cut into 1-inch slices. Score one side of each slice in several places. Spread and press spice mixture into gashes, then put eggplant into a dish. Partly cover (waxed paper works) and heat on high for 6 minutes. Uncover and cook on high for 2 or 3 minutes, until very soft. Garnish with cilantro. Serve hot or warm.

Yield: 4 or more servings.

image: ny times.

Peeps Diorama Winners

Apparently, there were Peeps Contests all over the place this year. I already mentioned the Washington Post's, and there was one at the Chicago Tribune that I saw, too. Click on the links to see the finalists from both papers.

The Trib's contest is where my most favourite, hilariously funny and clever entry came from. It was submitted by Joel Hoag & Kay Kojima from Brooklyn, NY. Ta da!!!

Ten Tips for Photographing Food

I get a twice-weekly e-mail newsletter called Photojojo, which always has interesting tips and techniques for photography. Since I am an amateur photographer, I find a lot of things I can use. Today's selection was especially interesting, since it was 10 Tips for Food Photography. Here are the TEN TIPS:

1. Choose a setting that enhances, but doesn’t distract from your food. Pick a simple, plain background or tablecoth. Use plates whose color contrasts with or harmonizes with your food, but not ones that are the same color. Before you start shooting, make sure there isn’t any distracting clutter in the background of the shot (stray people, silverware, whatever). Using a wider aperture to blur the background will help.
2. Use natural light whenever you can. The ideal set-up is a next to a large window, with a white curtain to diffuse the light. If you can’t get natural light, don’t be tempted to use your flash. Flash photography is too harsh for food’s delicate sensibilities. It flattens everything out and makes for unappealing shiny spots.
3. Learn to color balance. Especially in situations where natural light is unavailable, your photos can have a yellow or blue cast that makes food look terrible. Use the white balance setting on your camera, or adjust the color digitally later on.
4. Hold still. In low-light situations like restaurants and kitchens, long exposures will register any camera movement as blur. Use a tripod whenever possible. If you don’t have one, try resting your camera on a water glass or the back of a chair. This is one of my favourite tricks.
5. Take lots of pictures. Move around the food and see what angle looks best: down low to see the food head-on? Up high to take in the geometry of the presentation?
6. Get in as close as you can. Use the macro setting on your camera if it has one. Fill the frame with the food, so the viewer can almost taste it.
7. Work quickly. The faster you take pictures of the food, the fresher it will look. Cold, congealed meat and wilted salads just don’t look good. Use an empty plate to help you set up your shot before the food is ready. At the last minute, slip in the real plate of food.
8. The devil is in the details. Check the edges of your plates and glasses for stray food, and wipe away any smudges. Use sauces and garnishes to add color to drab shots (i.e. adding a lemon wedge to iced tea).
9. Don’t forget to take pictures of the process. Sometimes making the food (chopping, cooking) can be as interesting as the final product.
10. Know what not to shoot. Some things will just never look delicious, no matter how hard you try. Meals that are all the same color and brown sauces are best left alone.

I will try and make sure I follow these rules. To learn more about PhotoShopping photographs, watch this.

Aloha Tokyo

Cat and I decided to go to dinner by ourselves while Dog stayed home with the flu watching Twelve Monkeys (filmed in Baltimore, hon!). We got in the car and started driving and aimed towards Locust Point, or LoPo as we used to call it before it got to be the "it" urban neighbourhood (and got awful).

We decided sushi would be fun so found a parking place in front of Aloha Sushi on Fort Avenue. For the ten years I lived in LoPo, this space was the dark and narrow French Quarter, a desperation bar, when nothing else was open or you were in need of some carry out beer. It was an open secret that their main source of income was the numbers they were running, but who really cared. The Aloha Tokyo have just slapped their sign right over the old FQ sign.

Aloha Tokyo is about 14 feet wide and needs every inch of width. The bar takes up a third of the width, the chairs at the bar are way too deep for the place, and then there are tiny booths for two along the right side. The place is done in head-to-toe bamboo and a faux tiki look. The booths have tall benches and Cat and I, both being height-challenged, worried whether our feet would reach the floor. We saw one tiny woman struggle to get into the chairs. There wasn't two feet between the backs of the chairs and the booths, which made for some tight squeezes.

The first stumble happened when we ordered our drinks... Sapphire Gin and Tonics. The drinks arrived with the glasses half full and we correctly guessed that it was just gin. When we asked, the waitress said they didn't have any tonic and that the owner was going out to get some. She took our drinks and put them behind the bar. About a half an hour later, we saw the owner scurrying in with several grocery bags. We finally got our much watered down G&T's.

We each got sushi, mine a tuna with "crispy" on the top and Cat's an avacado and tuna. When we asked what crispy was, the waitress said it was powder. It was more like rice crispies. It added an interesting texture to the sushi.

One good sign for the restaurant was that three-quarters of the clientele in the place were Asian. That boded well for the food, which was pretty good. The entire waitstaff was Asian, and their command of English wasn't great. It was a little frustrating trying to get our drinks and then the check. The demographics of LoPo have changed so dramatically in the past few years that I am sure a sushi joint will be welcome. When I lived there, sushi was viewed as another word for bait.

Image: The Baltimore Sun

Wrap Up - Great Tastes Culinary Expo

Saturday was the Great Tastes Culinary Expo at the Tremont Grand and I was one of the panelists for the Baltimore Food Bloggers section of the event. My friend Julie and I went and ate and drank our way through four floors of the incredible Grand, former home of the Masons.

The place was mobbed and there were exhibits everywhere! Each of the rooms either had a presentation or exhibitors serving food or drinks. I managed to have some Piper Heidsieck Champagne, coffee with Kahlua Hazelnut and some Kubler Absinthe. I hadn't tasted absinthe since a long and boozy afternoon at the Napoleon House in New Orleans. The taste, which is very anise-y, took me straight back to that fun afternoon. But that stuff is strong!!!

The blog panel was lots of fun. Each of us introduced ourselves and talked a little bit about the focus of our blog, what we're trying to accomlish and who our audience is. Then we took questions from the audience and took turns answering them.

It was fun to finally put faces with the names that I read all of the time!

Translating the Numbers

On my design blog, I did a piece about how Ikea names their products. Turns out that there's a method to their madness. Who knew!

Now, I've recently found out what the numbers that you see on fruit and vegetables at the grocery store mean:

• A four-digit number means it was conventionally grown
• A five-digit number beginning in “9″ means it is organic
• A five-digit number beginning in “8″ means it was genetically modified

Wow... that's good information to know. I will certainly keep my eyes open for a little number 8 and avoid it at all costs.