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seriously.  Was ever a restaurant more anticipated?  Maybe, but not by me.  I don’t know what it was.  The romance of the south?  Gin cocktails?  Pork in numerous incarnations?  Whatever it was, I was so there!   Cask and Larder is a new restaurant in Orlando that is devoted to the pantry[ref]

lard·er/ˈlärdər/

Noun:
A room or large cupboard for storing food.

[/ref] and to booze [ref]

cask/kask/

Noun:
  1. A large barrellike container, used for storing liquids, typically alcoholic drinks.

[/ref].  As soon as I could conjure an excuse (two rough and tumble months of work finished!) I set a reservation through opentable for Saturday night with all the beautiful people that Winter Park, FL has to offer.

Our table was ready when we arrived and we goggled in looking over the room, tall white millwork lined with rows of preserved foods that were only vaguely identifiable.  The menu is set and printed each day and I stole it and put it in my purse for reference.  They also deliver spicy cheese straws in a julep cup and a clipboard with sheets for brews, cocktails and wines with a charming red stamp that reads 86 for items that have run out.  I ordered the gin & jarred which arrived with curly top skewered bread and butter pickles.  Quite crazy that cocktail.   It held ransom smalls gin, dolin blanc vermouth, house pickling liquid, bittermens habanero shrub.  Really?  Shrub? A shrub is a beverage unto it’s own and is made from fruit (in this case habanero juice), sugar and a liquor.  Not my usual.   It wasn’t sweet nor did it have heat.  The pickling liquid was probably the most prominent.  We ordered a ham tasting with three different southern hams.  It included a sweetish one, one more cured and one that was aged 400 days-nice dry and salty.  They were served on a wood slab with flaky biscuits and crazy interesting accompaniments-pickled green (like unripe) strawberries, farmer cheese and a sweet chile jam.  Crazy good.  Who even thinks of pickling green strawberries?      Ok, Z ordered grilled lamb heart for his protein.  Weird right?  I know it.  It had some crazy popcorn grits, apples with peanuts and was he said, grilled on the outside and beating on the inside.  I tried it.  A little rare for me and I had to not be a thinker in that moment.  I myself ordered the brisket.  Braised and sitting in a big juicy puddle of jus.  The brisket was sitting on a smear of mustard and had really nice acidic freshly pickled giardiniera.  So tender and two tiny rolls on the side to bring it home. I am going to make some giardiniera.  Maybe this weekend actually.  The proteins are large enough to share and the sides are definitely designed that way.  We had the creamiest succotash filled with corn, squash and ham hocks.  I have a hard time with some of the chew on the hocks.  Mentally I had a hard time with the foot thing but I ate it.

Somehow we spiralled out of control at that point and ordered two desserts.  Home-brew doughnuts and caramel pudding topped with thinned sweet glaze for dipping that we spooned through when the doughnut bites ran out.  Ridiculous.  We also had the sweets treats plate which that day was a trio of sugar:  soft individually wrapped salty caramels, soft smore bites and rich buckeyes.  A fantastic food experience.  I couldn’t wait to go and I am so excited to go back.

the meatball shop

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Z asked for a cookbook.  Sort of.  Ok, well, maybe he didn’t but he did say, ‘We could cook through this one.’ in reference to a cookbook we saw during a recent trip to Barnes and Noble.  It is written by a couple of guys that started a kind of fast casual, come backoften meatball shop in New York.  They wanted accessible and affordable food.  So, all things being the same, I secretly ordered him a copy for his birthday.  He is impossible to surprise and always knows his gifts with unnerving accuracy.  He got some baking pans and a piece of Lego art from Etsy too.   He didn’t guess any of them this year.  The book is The Meatball Shop Cookbook and is chock full of meatballs of every flavor but only one shape.  Tonight we tried the very first one, the basic meatball in the basic sauce.  I oven roasted the balls and then smothered them in sauce to finish and served over spaghetti noodles finished in the sauce.  A sprinkle of parmesan and a small green salad with some bright vinaigrette on the side.  The meatballs were tender and moist (yeah, I said moist) and like their name, basic.  I followed the recipe and would add more red pepper flakes if I made them again.   I’m looking forward to the varieties and trying not to be scared.  Thai inspired, buffalo chicken or goat anyone?

rocco’s tacos

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new Mexican place opened up on restaurant row last week called Rocco’s Tacos.  It is mix of chupacabra meets Día de los Muertos meets biker bar.  Filled with iron and glass chandeliers and masks that I think had some real hair (kinda freak me out a little) and the nice touch of pig shaped molcajetes on the tables we didn’t know exactly what to expect food wise.  They make guac in the pigs tableside and while I love guac, Z does not and I didn’t need to literally eat a pig of it.    We ordered chips and salsa – their salsa coming out as a diced tomato without too much heat – and I had a jalapeno margarita.  It was a bit more on the strong side and had a bite in the back of the throat.  We later found out they have a hot sauce that looks to be housemade and had some nice heat and flavor.  I ordered a combination plate of steak taco, braised beef and pickled onion tostada and cheese quesadilla.  I  The tostada was the stand out – the meat was tender and had an unexpected note of cinnamon.  The pickled onion and crema making me wish that I had that as a stand alone entree.  Overall, no real heat (again, you need the hot sauce if you like heat) but tasty.  They are fairly liberal with cilantro.  Crowning glory – the most ridiculous homemade churros.  Z is a huge fan of churros and we mark Rick Bayless at Xoco in Chicago as having the best.  These were actually pronounced his 2nd favorite which is liberal praise!  They looked just awful – clearly unpracticed hands made them – but they tasted light airy and were liberally coated with cinnamon and sugar.  The light air made them a joy to eat.  We will go back.

outpost

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I use this blog as something of a journal and haven’t felt an overwhelming need to document a lot that happened this summer.  Just a bit of the blues I guess, or maybe I was just too hot.  We did some work in our house this summer and I have had a couple of busy months at work which I am really looking forward to wrapping up at the end of September – culminating in the dreaded inventory.  I am looking forward to cooler days and some new projects at both work and home.  We began the summer at the beach with my sister and her family and I feel like it really ended last weekend with a short road trip to the newest destination shopping location in Florida, Trader Joe’s.  It opened in Sarasota and is roughly ten minutes from my parents front door.  It opened on Friday morning with shoppers who left home as early as 3 am to be first in the door.  Well, by Saturday after lunch I’d guess we were like the 5000th shoppers.  I am not even sure that is an exaggeration.  It was insane.  My dad kindly dropped us off (my mom, Z and I) in the street next to the parking lot and went and parked on the other side of a four lane road and walked over.  Us and our 300 new best friends. 

We made our way in, picking up the basket of the last person to check out and entered the fray.  We couldn’t get near the coolers to even get a look at the famous prepared foods and I had to content myself with only dry goods and wine aisles.  We found all kinds of necessities – $4 wine, sea salt dark chocolate almonds and gluten free snickerdoodles for co-workers along with cookies, buffalo jerky, dehydrated mango and cashews for ourselves.  Can’t live without that stuff.  I hope that TJ’s takes a cue from this Sarasota store and makes it’s way into central Florida.   The market certainly seems to be there.  Even if it doesn’t though, I suppose it’s going to become a new habit.

out·post/ˈoutˌpōst/

Noun:
  1. A small military camp or position at some distance from the main force, used esp. as a guard against surprise attack.
  2. A remote part of a country or empire.
  3. Any Trader Joe’s outside the state of California.

I’m not crafty and I don’t bake

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one of my pinterest boards is titled, ‘I wish I was crafty’ and it is filled with projects I like and in reality, that I wish I had both time and funds to pursue.  I walk through the aisles of Jo-Ann or Michaels with Z and say things like, ‘that’d be fun to do’ and he realistically (or aggravatingingly) says, ‘ do you really?’ or ‘when would you do that?’  In reality I am usually in those places pick up items for our children’s programs at work.  Most of my craftiness is spent on meal planning and creative cookery.  This summer I began pickling and jamming and I recently did pick up the most charming hand carved stamp to use in labelling my jars.  Looking forward to that day it actually comes out of my craft suitcase[ref]yellow hardsided suitcase that was my maternal grandmothers and is filled with the ephemera of packaging like ribbons, tissue paper, wooden fruit boxes, cellophane bags and bakers twine[/ref].  One of the first will be called ‘love me some spicy jalapenos’ as named by my husbands boss for my home pickled jalapenos.  I also purchased a can of bronze spray paint yesterday in order to channel my inner Banksy[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy[/ref] -or to try my hand at changing the look of a Ugandan basket picked up from my shop at work.

The baking?  Well, I have made it my mantra to say I don’t bake, but in reality, I don’t bake often.  I can do it but never just love the results and don’t really want to eat the whole of whatever it is and am not usually proud enough of said thing to bring it in to work.  I have noticed that lots of my pins tend toward baked goods and a couple weeks ago I went ahead and made apple toffee blondies.  Ridiculously full of butter, brown sugar, diced apple and toffee bits, Z promptly renamed them ‘bogey bars‘ for the little soft apple chunks inside – it didn’t seem to stop him from eating them.  They were super sweet and I only used half the frosting that the recipe made which was still more than enough for us.  I also took a good chunk of the pan in to the office.  It was the right thing to do.