My Urban Pantry

Hit the road

March 29, 20142 Comments

Have you seen all the things that are within, say, 200 miles of your house? I’m guessing most people have not. Life gets busy with any and everything to suck away time and energy. Our mid-late winter has been busy and I am surely exhausted. One of our friends is working on his list of 30 before he turns 30 and one of those things was to go to St Augustine. Florida celebrated 500 years since the Spanish landed in St Augustine last year and this was a fun place to go to catch a little history and to get a little bit of fun relaxation and help our friend celebrate within his 30th year. We hit the road by 8:30 am for the roughly two hour drive to the coast and made it with a brief stop for a doughnut and coffee en route. We bought trolley tickets that were for an on-off at will ride around town that were actually good for up to three days. A fair deal if you are spending the weekend in St Augustine. We jumped on and headed for the fort. In my imagination I can romanticize the days of the fort trying to hold back the wily French with my modern notions of running water and flush toilets but I’ll bet it wasn’t the most comfortable place to be. The Spanish battle flag still flies high. I love history! St Augustine is a bit of a double edged sword because it is clssically historical (in an America old sort of way) but it has also gone commercial in that sort of schlocky touristy kind of way.

Our next stop was the old market street and the best part of this for me was actually a gourmet fruit ice pop (ie Popsicle) from Hyppo. I had strawberry datil (a locally grown hot pepper) and it was really nice. Z and our friend picked up other weird (and I can’t remember) flavors and didn’t fare as well as I. Actually, theirs both had stringy mangoes which contributed to their less happy purchase decision. Hyppo is literally 10 square feet in an outdoor closet in a tiny courtyard. There were quite a few Spanish shops and tapas places. I’ll have to put more work into seeing those in the future.

After lunch at a funny beach place called Barnacle Bills where we had various shrimp & burger baskets (not bad and we picked it because it was there.) we jumped back on the trolley and …got off on the wrong stop. So, we walked up to the San Sebastian Winery. San Sebastian is a tiny offshoot of the local to Orlando Lake Ridge Winery and I have to tell you something. I don’t like muscadine grapes. There was one red – a blend that I could imagine served cold over ice with fruit a la Sangria that I didn’t mind. The rest. Meh. But, here’s the winner. Same street. Brand new. Local. Distillery.

The St Augustine Distillery is brand new. Literally had only been open for tours for five days. They have so far made and bottled only Vodka in giant gorgeous copper pot stills (is that really the name-feels so bootlegger) and at the end of the short (15 or so minute) tour that started with a cute small one room history of the building, which is an old Ice Plant and a video that includes how they got started and how they are working with and helping local farmers and ending in a kinda random would-be speakeasy bar where the tour guide turned bartender and make us a Florida Mule. Vodka, Ginger Syrup, Bubbles and Mint I think. Like any good museum, they got our emails (good job marketers!) and emailed us the recipe. It is a well done and super cute hipster kinda place. I totally had a weak moment and bought a bottle of vodka, some Jack Rudy tonic syrup and a bottle of celery bitters in their oversized, well curated gift shop. I appreciated the overall Exit through the gift shop and well thought out merchandise strategy. The building is history come alive again and they mention the restaurant housed in the other half and give a good plug for their shared space neighbor. We decided to come back and have dinner after we finished our trolley tour.

After the trolley tour wrapped up and made it’s way through beach town end of day traffic we headed for the Ice Plant. It is styled like a speakeasy and serves up all manner of exotic complicated cocktails and very tiny (6 items I think) dinner menu but a fair sized starters and bar menu. The bar menu explains each drink and gives a visual view of the type of ice you will find in that drink and the drinks are built around how that ice works in the drinks. They show five varieties right on a dedicated page of their website-shaved, rock, long rock (!), sphere and pebbled. I ordered the funnest drink with shaved ice. It came out in a cutey coupe glass heaped with shaved ice and thyme leaves and they poured my drink over and let it melt into cold ginnyness. I love gin. That’s weird. But here’s why. It’s herbal and it’s clean and it vaguely tastes of piney Christmas. It pairs so well with lime which is decidedly my favorite flavor. So, I had a ‘Snowbird’ which encompasses all those things. Death Door Gin, Lime, Sugar, Thyme and Shaved Ice in a Coupe. Funnest. I so enjoyed it and the ice gives some glamour. We ordered a couple of starters, notably one of medjool dates stuffed with blue cheese and wrapped in bacon. I’m going to say that everyone should eat that once in their life. Salty. Sweet, Dense. Savory. It has all the notes. I had a great big crafted burger with a fried egg for dinner and that should have put me straight into a food coma. No room for dessert for me.

After supper we got a little bit sketchy and drove out to the lighthouse for a quick walk through someones side yard to see the rising moon hanging low in the sky over the lighthouse which was closed to the public although there were definitely some people and lights playing in the windows at the top.

A good drive with all the Florida crazies and tourists and we were home. We all saw something new and expanded our view, if not just a little bit. What’s the best day trip from your house?

A New Turn In The South

March 16, 2014Leave a comment

Lately I have been inspired (INSPIRED!) by things – Southern. I just keep wanting to see and taste the things that define Southern-ness. So, one of the interesting things about that is this cookbook, A New Turn In The South is written by a Canadian. Maybe that’s what I like about it. He’s not from here (here being Georgia) but he embraces it, claims it, chases it. Hugh Acheson, maybe you know him from Top Chef. You know, he has a unibrow and a big tattoo of a radish on his forearm. (ahem, Hughnibrow) He says things in an admirably clever way. Somewhere I picked up a copy of his cookbook, maybe a gift, I can’t remember now but it is so much fun to flip through and I’ve finally started cooking from it too. Novel. One night recently Z asked for Tilapia Piccata. It is a fairly standard lightly pan fried fish with a super quick pan sauce made of butter, white wine & capers and I forget how much I like it until I’m eating it. This time even the cat got a little piece of fish which made his whole day worth living. On the side I decided to try one of Hugh’s recipes-for Squash Casserole. First you cook up a leeky cream sauce and then you layer squash with parmesan, bread crumbs and sauce. Afterward you bake the whole mess until it’s bubbly. I found it needed to be cooked about twice as long as Hugh requested in his recipe because I wanted the squash to break down and not be too toothy. The recipe was a nice departure from what I would usually do which is to either steam or pan fry the squash. It was a lot more involved but the recipe was not difficult to follow save for one thing. When I was making my leek sauce I could NOT resist adding a bit of the green part of the leek, being hesitant to just toss it. I didn’t take into account the sauce being totally pureed for use and how minty green it would make it. So, as in most things, if you follow the recipe, or the ‘rules’ you just might not have to explain what or why you did something later. You will notice my ultra green sauce in the picture. We both really liked this dish and will definitely be making it again. I’m looking forward to trying a bunch of Hugh’s pickling recipes. Can’t wait to see how he transforms humble Southern vegetables into delicious bites. I am excited about how he transforms his roots and seizes on Southern ones.

Kind of Good Stuff

March 6, 20143 Comments

This was one of the worst dinners I’ve made in a while. Worst technically. I don’t really know if it was the cookbook or if it was just me but OH boy. Halfway through cooking and half burned I was ready to chuck it and order a pizza. I have had pretty good luck with Spike Mendelsohn’s Good Stuff cookbook in the past, whipping up burgers and a wedge salad or two. I have noticed an error or two in the writing, notably the cheese sauce measurements and the lack of sauce for the mac & cheese but they were fairly easy catches for me as a home-cook. I’m not sure everyone would be so happy when they tried the cheese sauce and it’s way over population of flour. I can usually spot errors quickly and compensate. I don’t know if this recipe just got me on a bad night or what. Fried Chicken sandwiches and honey mustard sauce. Seems relatively easy right? RIGHT?!

Ok, the honey mustard, I halved because I couldn’t imagine needing two cups of honey mustard …Ever. But, I reduced as stated and ended up with a thick mass of ginger and mustard flavored honey. I used about 2 Tablespoons and dumped a cup down the drain after dinner. That was kind of a messy waste. I made the patties and chilled them, as stated, before dredging in flour, egg and breadcrumbs. Those breadcrumbs burned before the chicken was anywhere close to being done. I ended up throwing the whole thing in the oven to bake so that we could actually eat the way underdone chicken. Not my best effort. While I like a few of the burgers in this book, particularly the ‘Prez Obama‘ the whole thing is a bit overwrought I think. If you are in DC it would probably be better just to go to the restaurant. What’s the worst thing you ever made?

A Hot Mess

March 4, 2014Leave a comment

I have made something that could rightly be called – Pie-l (Pile for the uninitiated. ) I call it a hot mess. I flipped through The Pioneer Women Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl trying to find something to add to our week and found this pie Lately I’ve just wanted to eat pie for some reason. It seemed like it would be a quick recipe and I had a pie crust in the freezer so I pulled it out and picked up the Granny Smith apples at the store. It is an easy recipe—sort of. In an ideal world I’d be like Ree Drummond and make my own crust and make enough to serve my cowhands and a pack of kids. She might be accidental but she learned the rules and is living it up! I just made a skimpy one pie that had holes in the crust through which all my butter and and sugar leaked out onto the pan. Thank goodness I had lined the cooked sheet with a hunk of parchment because I don’t think that pie would have come up otherwise. All my goo leaked out leaving probably what would have been a healthier baked apples in a tiny bit of crust but I scooped up what was salvageable and drizzled it on along with pouring on a small stream of salted caramel Torani that we had in the pantry to fill in for the part that was now charred onto the pan… Ree’s cookbook is good if you don’t mind lots of butter and cream. I’m not saying either of those are a bad thing but they work it off on the ranch. Our sofa isn’t nearly as …strenous. I’ve made a few recipes from the book, a creamy spaghetti, some brisket and such. My sister made the mashed potato recipe for Thanksgiving and I think she halved it to serve like 10 people. Good hearty midwestern cookin’.

Not exactly our anniversary

March 2, 2014Leave a comment

We celebrated our anniversary on Friday night – February 28th. Technically we don’t have one this year because it isn’t leap year. We still managed to get out for an amazing dinner at our favorite, Cask & Larder: A Southern Public House. Each bite is so good. I know every time I blog about it I feel like you’ve already heard it but if you are in Orlando, you should eat there. We started out with brisket hand pies and a new flavor-sorghum. Sorghum is derived from grasses and has a whole lot of agricultural uses. We ended up having sorghum molasses in two of the dishes last night, as a dipping sauce for the hand pies and as a sauce with Arbol chile on fried brussels sprouts. Wow. Carmelly and deeply flavorful and something else i can’t identify. It was amazing in both preparations, with the bbq (maybe just smoked?) brisket and with the fatty heat of the arbol and fried sprouts. Southern food can be so vast and exciting and complicated when you take a deep look at it. I feel like we haven’t even scratched the surface. Z had a hanger steak with blistered tomatoes and this ridiculously sweet corn pudding. I can’t even imagine how to make that pudding. It was like cornmeal with a crunchy top and pieces of corn and all baked in a small cast iron dish. I had the Nashville Hot Chicken, which is significantly different from the brunch hot chicken I’ve had here before. This was I think a grilled and roasted/basted half a bone in chicken rather than a fried chicken breast that they have for brunch with eggs or waffles. It was spicy with a side of creamy and mustardy Alabama white BBQ sauce and some mellow flavorful macaroni & cheese on the side. I had a fun cocktail that was really nice for cutting through the flavors, a Jealous Monk, which included Anchor junipero gin, green chartreuse, lime juice, celery bitters and champagne vinegar-what?! so good. It was like the freshest limeade you ever had. Z finished off with his version of a cocktail, a malted milkshake. I ate the rich clearly housemade cherry on top. Cheers!