Out to Lunch?

By Xani and Erin

Hey folks... sorry about the lack of posts lately. You know how it is this time of year (prepare to hear that excuse from now til, oh, March)! BCD is gearing up for a knock-down, blow-out Thanksgiving feast today (well, we started cooking on Tuesday, natch) so there will be a long, drool-inducing post about that sometime next week. In the meantime, here are some "leftovers"-- pictures, links, recipes and witty (?) comments from the past few weeks. Hope this will tide you over til the next big post. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!

Xani celebrates the season and tackles a pomegranate for the first time. So many seeds! She turns some of them into a delicious salad with goat cheese and lemon-honey vinaigrette, a la this post on Slashfood.

Another night, she turned to cozy comfort food, mini-meatloaves and brown rice:

Would have preferred to make mini-muffin meatloaves, but turns out I don't have a muffin tin! How is that possible??

The recipe for these was something I pretty much made up-- cooked garlic and onion mixed with breadcrumbs, an egg, a little milk, oregano, etc. The "glaze" on top is just ketchup mixed with apple cider vinegar. A couple minutes in the broiler at the end of the cooking time gave them a perfect finish.

A while later, a casual little cocktail party gave us an excuse to whip up some new recipes and some old favorites.

Recipe 1: Puff pastry triangles with Indian-spiced veggie filling

Step one: Puff Pastry (yes, the frozen kind)

Turns out my favorite (read: only) rolling pin was at BCD headquarters and I didn't have time to pick it up. Luckily you can use a wine bottle as a stand-in. THOSE I have plenty of!

Topping each square with filling (sauteed onions, tomatoes, cumin, coriander, curry powder)

Folding, sealing and crimping each of these took forever, but it was worth it...

Golden brown, spicy and delicious!

Recipe 2: Mediterranean Relish. This recipe is a BCD staple. We must have made this for dozens of parties over the years. It has tons of great flavor, its fairly simple to make, and always has people asking for the recipe (and eating every last bite!).

The relish.

The whole spread!

And for dessert: MINI-CHEESECAKE BRULEE!

Fire+sugar=delicious!

Another evening we headed out to a great local spot in Federal Hill, Metropolitan Coffee House and Wine Bar. This cozy little restaurant/bar/coffeehouse is totally our "new place" for the season, and we look forward to going back to try more of their great dishes and wonderful beer and wine selection. On this visit we had:

A couple of delicious and STRONG beers

Fantastic blackened shrimp over cheese grits-- I swear we ate every last grit!

Great pork BBQ sandwich served with spicy coleslaw

Mushroom ravioli in tomato cream sauce-- sauce was slightly too reminiscent of Campbell's Cream of Tomato but a tasty dish overall...

Hope you enjoyed this taste of "leftovers"... something to get you ready to eat those turkey leftovers for the next few days, right?? BCD wishes you and yours happy eating and a wonderful Thanksgiving!

X & E

A tip from Gellie-- lick your plate clean this Thanksgiving!!