B&O Does Coffee and Donuts (and more!)

by EP & X

Last week, we were invited to attend a press dinner at one of our favorite Baltimore spots, the B&O American Brasserie.  Long-time readers will remember that we've been many times and always enjoy the seasonal menu, interesting cocktails, playful desserts, and beautiful space.  And last week was no different!  We enjoyed a number of outstanding dishes while chatting away with other Baltimore food bloggers and journalists including Dara of Dining Dish and Nakiya of Taste of Baltimore.  

We started with champagne (much, much needed after the stress of work these days), but we had to try some of the bartender's amazing and always interesting cocktails.  Xani got The Cadizian, for which the B&O bartender won the title in a recent cocktail contest where the featured spirit was sherry.  I got the "Law Dog," which featured Grey Goose, Galliano, grapefruit juice, and orange syrup.  Yum yum yum (and a little tipsy).

Xani's drink; EP & Nakiya chat in the background

Summertime eats at B&O

by Erin

Last week we were invited to try some of the new summer menu items at B&O American Brasserie, one of our most favorite spots in Charm City. The evening was a bit more special since it was the night before my birthday and it really kicked off the slew of celebrations we had planned (one of which may result in a new BCD banner but that's still under wraps for now!).

We enjoyed some celebratory champagne while waiting for the other ladies in our party to arrive. We sat at a nice big table in the corner (right next to a mini-kitchen where the charming pastry chef was busily piping marshmallow onto butterscotch tartlets...but I'm getting ahead of myself!) and perused the cocktail menu for our second round -- hey, we were celebrating!

Our first course included the Heirloom Tomato Salad, which had compressed watermelon, parmesan, cherries, and basil from the Chef's rooftop garden. Very refreshing on the sticky July night. We also had two other new summer menu items during this course: the Jumbo Lump Crab on a bed of quinoa with sweet potato, salmon roe, and sea urchin aioli, and the Snapper Ceviche, with avocado carpaccio, puffed grains, and red pepper sorbet. Such interesting flavors and textures - like a feature film happening in your mouth! And what evil genius thinks of uni aioli??

Snapper Ceviche with avocado carpaccio
(picture obviously not taken by the BCD girls)

Jumbo lumb crab on quinoa with sweet potatoes and uni aioli

Second course was the flatbread course, and these are TDF. We seriously had to smack each others' hands away from going for seconds since we knew more food was coming. So. Irresistable. We had the Market Flatbread (which we've had before but it warrants mentioning again) with potatoes, smoked ricotta, baby arugula, and an egg on top. We also enjoyed the Smoked Crab Flatbread and the Confit Duck Flatbread with foie gras and cherries. Seriously drooling as I type this.

Next course we had the Braised Veal Cheek with a very interesting sous vide potato, mache greens, and creamed corn. Holy moly, this was great creamed corn.

We also got to try a bunch of their new mains, including some local Maryland Rockfish with crispy skin, avocado-oxtail risotto, and baby tomatoes; Bacon-Wrapped Amberjack, served with cherry-corn succotash, string beans, and a beer-foie gras vinaigrette. Also meat-wrapped was the "Surf & Turf" - a serrano-wrapped quail (also stuffed with duck I think?) and a perfectly cooked, huge scallop, atop a bed of pea puree and a side of cherry jam. Wow.

Crispy-skin Rockfish

"Surf & Turf" with quail and scallop

We loved the rockfish the best of those fish dishes, but one of the biggest hits of the night was a sneak attack from a Buffalo Duck! Yes, this was a deliciously cooked duck coated in a "buffalo" sauce (but much more sophisticated than that of Hooters just a few blocks away), topped with a lightly dressed coleslaw of napa cabbage and red onion and -- get this -- homemade tater tots. Unlike regular tater tots, they tasted like (gasp!) potatoes and were crispy and crunchy on the outside. Delish.

Quick note about B&O - they have daily specials Tuesday-Saturday, and Tuesday was "chicken fried steak" night, which both of us were eyeing. Unfortunately we didn't get it but it just gives us an excuse to go back, right? Other dailys include housemade sausage and champ potatoes, butter poached Maine lobstah, and sous vide lamb loin.

Finally it was time for a sweet treat -- or 3. The pastry chef came out and presented us with 3 beautiful plates: first we had the butterscotch tart with a bruleed marshmallow topping; we also had a "banana split" with chocolate ice cream, peanut butter tuile cookies, and caramelized bananas, and last we had a sweet corn cake with cherries and some other deliciousness I can't remember because I was slipping into a diabetic coma. All of the desserts were incredible; we loved the banana split and we both love a corn cake, be it sweet or savory.

At the end we were lucky enough to have a few minutes of Chef Reidt's time, so nice of him to stop by. We're looking forward to seeing him at the Crab Bash on Tuesday, 8/3 at 5:30! Did you get your tickets?? Rumor is they're sold out but there might be more at the door...hope to see you there!

Thanks to Amy and Chef Reidt for welcoming us again into B&O for really outstanding summer foods. I can't wait to see what Chef will do with all the cozy fall produce!


Here's to birthday banana splits -

EP

Beer + Sausage = Independence

by Erin and Xani



For the Fourth of July this year, Xani and I wanted to have a party. While throwing around ideas one weekend at Blackacre, our parents suggested that we recreate one of their fabulous parties from when they were first married (apparently throwing great parties is genetic): Sausage and Beer party. We loved the idea immediately and started a'planning.

We decided that it'd be fun to try to make our own sausages for the party, so over the Father's Day weekend, we spent an afternoon elbow-deep in pork. Xani brought her Charcuterie book by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn and we tried to follow its directions but we hit a few snags along the way and had to go off-script at some points.

Father-daughter sausage-making on Father's Day!

We decided to make three kinds of sausage: sweet Italian, hot Italian, and chorizo. Seasoning the meat was easy, it was all the steps afterwards that proved challenging. We used a pork shoulder (per the recipe) and Dad bought a brand new gigantic meat grinder. However, the meat had a lot of extra "stuff" other than pure meat and it got all caught up in the grinder. So, we tried chopping the meat up into smaller pieces by hand and then grinding it. Then we tried using the food processor to chop the meat before grinding it. Then we just used the food processor alone. In the end, the best texture came from the second method (food processor and then run it through the grinder).

Seasoned up and ready to go into the grinder



Dad chops the meat after we realized the grinder alone wouldn't cut it (ha, pardon the pun)

Before putting the meat into the sausage maker, we cooked little bits of each kind of meat to make sure the seasoning was right. They all tasted awesome, so we were glad for that at least. Then it was time to make the sausages. We got natural pork casings from a butcher in Federal Hill at the Cross Street Market (thanks Henry!) and soaked them for a few hours to get all the salt off of them (that's how they are preserved). Then we loaded the meat into the grinder and started making sausages! It was pretty easy at that point (HA - easy after hours of seasoning, chopping, and grinding meat). We made both links and large coils of sausage and froze them in preparation for the party a few weeks later.





Flash forward to a few days before July 4: we went to the farmer's market to buy lots of veggies and fruits for the party, and also to buy some back-up sausages from our favorite pork guy in case ours turned out to be terrible. We purchased some brats from him, in addition to some sage sausage. So, in the end, we had 5 flavors of sausage to serve. We were happy that almost everything we served at the party was local/organic - yay us!

We decided to serve the sausages in mini-form (approximately 2-3 inches) with mini-rolls, so people could try more than one flavor without having to commit (?) to eating an entire full-size sausage. To serve with the sausages, we made 3 delicious condiments from this Food & Wine article. We made Curried Apricot and Tomato Ketchup, Quick Mustard Picalilly, and Smoky Pimento Relish.



5 kinds of sausages with the accompanying chart



Condiments!

In addition to the sausages, we served a tomato, feta, and basil salad (we made up the recipe), coleslaw with cayenne and toasted caraway seeds, and horseradish potato salad.



Lovely tomatoes



Tomato, feta, & basil salad (basil from Xani's garden!)



Horseradish potato salad



Coleslaw with Cayenne and Caraway Seeds



Side dishes and accompanying signs

We also made Old Bay popcorn for people to nosh on and we cut up a watermelon (which we served outside so people could spit their seeds on the ground -- or at each other).

For dessert, we decided to make ice cream sandwiches!! We were inspired, as always, by Ina Garten and we made her Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies which she used for ice cream sandwiches. We made a few changes, however: first, neither of us is a big white chocolate fan, so we used semi-sweet chocolate chips instead; also, we wanted the cookies to be more chewy than crispy so they wouldn't fall apart when in ice cream sandwich-form (and they wouldn't stay so solid such that they would force the ice cream to escape out the sides), so we referred to Xani's favorite book, Ratio by Michael Ruhlman, who instructed us to add more butter if you want a chewier cookie. Right, that's just what an Ina Garten recipe needs, more butter. But, we followed Ruhlman's ratio and sure enough, they came out just chewy enough.



Mmmm cookies



All paired up and ready to be made into sandwiches!

Once the cookies had baked and cooled, it was time to assemble the ice cream sandwiches. Now, this is where we differ in our cooking techniques. Erin usually does not mind getting messy in the kitchen, while Xani would prefer to keep a clean work space. Making ice cream sandwiches was, well....Xani wasn't too happy, let's put it that way. We had an assembly line where Xani would put the ice cream between two cookies, and then Erin would roll the sandwiches in red and blue sprinkles and place them in the freezer. This was a melty, sticky, crushed-sprinkles-all-over-the-floor endeavor, but we made it through. And they looked (and tasted) great!



Ice cream sandwich assembly line; note that the ice cream is on a scale so we could put the same amount in each one (nerds!)

Miraculously, for the first time in all of our years of party-throwing, we were done with everything before our friends arrived! It was great. We asked all of our friends to bring their favorite beer, and we planned to give out prizes for different categories of beer, for example: beer from furthest away, beer from closest, strongest beer, "classiest" beer (ahem, Miller High Life), most unique flavor, highest alcohol content, etc. Our friends came through and we had a grand old time and lots of delicious beers!



Food, as far as the eye could see

For contest winners, we gave out foodie tattoos, which were BAD ASS! We had a great time giving them out and I kept mine on for as long as I could. Here are some foodie tattoo pics:













After lots of eating, talking, and drinking, it was time to head up to Xani's rooftop deck, where we could watch the fireworks! We brought the ice cream sandwiches (and, let's be honest, more beer) up to the roof and watched the show on a practically perfect night for it. We may or may not have chanted "USA! USA!" at some point.



It was a great party and the food was awesome (if we do say so ourselves)! The chorizo turned out the best as far as our homemade sausages went - it had the best taste and texture. The condiments were also great - the picalilly was our favorite. It had sauerkraut, mustard, and beer in it - what could be bad? The cole slaw was really tasty, and while the potato salad was good, the horseradish we had was kind of weak so it didn't have that "punch you in the sinuses" effect we were hoping for. The tomato and feta salad was absolutely delicious and fresh and was a big hit. Everyone seemed to really like the ice cream sandwiches too.

Thanks to our guests for coming and bringing delicious beer and snacks (esp. Joy who made a delicious and beautiful 4th of July dessert!), and thanks to Mom and Dad for helping us make sausages and make a huge mess in Kitchen Stadium!

Here are a few more pics from the party:















Joy's dessert - it's nice to be friends with a pastry chef ;)

Happy sausage making and eating,

EP & X

'Fresh Thoughts' on Our Meal at the National Aquarium

by Erin and Xani



Xani and I saw the movie Food, Inc. tonight (it's only in Baltimore until Wednesday, folks!). We are both big fans of Michael Pollan and his philosophies, and as we have discussed in earlier posts, we are glad to be part of the movement towards safer food: safer for our bodies, our families, our communities, and our planet. (Read a brief but great review of Food, Inc. by the Amateur Gourmet here. The movie also raises a few very interesting legal issues such as antitrust, libel, agencies' regulatory powers, etc. -- legal nerd alert!) While we both make a daily effort to know where our food is coming from and support sources that produce local and/or organic and/or sustainable products, an opportunity to further support this effort fell into our laps a few weeks ago -- or should I say it swam into our laps?

The National Aquarium in Baltimore held a series of dinners on sustainable seafood called the Fresh Thoughts Dining Series, and Xani and I were invited to attend the third and final dinner in late June. It was fun, delicious, and definitely informative and interesting!

Xani and I walked from our neighborhood through the harbor to the Aquarium on a lovely June evening. We arrived and were presented with a free ticket to the dolphin show! We are SO VIP. It was a great show - I am always amazed at how smart dolphins are. Apparently they are one of few animals that recognizes themselves in mirrors! After the dolphin show, we checked out the jellyfish exhibit, which was creepy but beautiful, and then we headed up to one of the top floors of the Aquarium for the dinner.





The room was beautiful and looked out across the entire harbor, and you could see our neighborhood of Federal Hill across the water.



Our 'hood



There was a bar (yippee!) with local Clipper City beers, plus sangria to match the latin flavor of the evening's menu. After a few drinks and some guacamole and chips, we sat down at our assigned tables. The chef served stuffed mini-peppers filled with cheese and peppers. It was a delicious first bite to the meal. After some more chatting with Aquarium staff and other bloggers, we settled down to listen to a few brief talks on sustainable seafood.





Chips and guacamole made right on the spot



Stuffed peppers

The theme of the evening was our good friend, the tilapia. They chose tilapia as the theme because it is farm-raised locally in Maryland, and (we learned) it is an herbivore so it is low down on the food chain. Lower down on the food chain means fewer fish went into creating the fish you are eating: for every pound of tuna you eat (which is high on the food chain), that represents 10 pounds of squid, and for every squid, that represents 10 pounds of smaller fish that it ate, etc. With a tilapia, all you are eating are the plants it ate. The ecologist explained it by likening it to land animals: eating tuna or swordfish is like eating lions and tigers - they are the biggest, baddest predators on the block, and we should avoid eating them to conserve the fish (or tiger?) population.

After all that learning we were ready to eat! The food was excellent, especially the tilapia tacos. We both love fish tacos and these were outstanding - the fish was marinated in cumin, chipotle, lime zest and juice, and olive oil, and was cooked perfectly. Then it was placed atop a corn tortilla along with a lime-cilantro creme, pickled red onion, shredded cabbage, and queso chihuahua - YUM! So delicious. They also had chicken tacos, and the chicken was from Springfield Farms (a local farm where readers might recall we got our Thanksgiving Turkey last year). In addition to the tacos, the chef served a delicious salad and grilled corn as well, both so tasty and fresh. We enjoyed lovely conversation with our tablemates and a few more brief speeches (one from the Clipper City brewery, another from the chef) as we finished our dinner.



Fish taco



Chicken taco, salad, corn

Then it was time for dessert! It was strawberry and blueberry shortcake with whipped cream. The shortcake was perfectly made - tender and sweet, plus a sprinkling of coarse sugar over the top. A great end to the meal.



Shady shortcake

After dinner, the aquarium had closed to the public so it was just us VIPs hanging around. Xani and I had the shark exhibit all to ourselves! Kinda spooky but mostly awesome.

Thanks to the National Aquarium and Amy B. for inviting us to this interesting and important event - we learned a lot and had a great time!

Happy sustainable eating, and go see Food, Inc.!

EP & X

Celebrating at Woodberry Kitchen

by Erin & Xani

The past few days have been great for the BCD girls. On the Xani front, the doctor removed her cast and she now has full typing abilities! Keep your eyes out for more regular blogging by the X-Factor. As for EP, yesterday she turned in her bar application and then had her last law school class ever! Also, after LOTS of hard work, her article was published in her law journal, and it's very exciting to see it in print after all this time.

So, to celebrate all this good news, we headed up to Hampden and went to Woodberry Kitchen. Xani had been several times and finally we got the chance to go together! WK has a strong emphasis on local, organic, and seasonal eating, and supports sustainable agriculture (very appropriate for Earth Day!). In other words, we HAD to get there ASAP.


The space at WK is an old renovated industrial space and it's super cozy with a wood-burning oven and an open kitchen-- its totally gorgeous. While WK's menu has a good handful of entrees, we decided to stick with their larger selection of small plates. It was so hard to choose only a few - we wanted to order everything!

We started with some celebratory cocktails. Erin got the "Birds and the Bees," comprised of housemade berry liquor, local honey, lemon twist, and cava (Spanish sparkling wine). It was similar to a Kir. Xani got an organic IPA.

Then it was time to eat! We started with the Kitchen Pickles and Olives, a small jar of pickled onions, green beans, and leeks, plus olives. A good light start to the meal. Then came one of the specials of the day, featuring the first local asparagus of the season! It was a salad with shaved asparagus, greens, smoked shrimp, and a vinaigrette with lots of lemon and mint. Very refreshing, interesting flavor combination with the shrimp, and great to enjoy the asparagus!

Also during this course we enjoyed the Chicken Liver Parfait, a mild pate of chicken liver served with crispy crostini, a berry sauce, and apples. Very nice dish.

Next we enjoyed another special of the day: local rockfish served sashimi-style topped with a salad of fresh greens and ginger. This dish was fresh and delicious, great flavor from the fish combined with the fresh salad. It was also a very generous portion, and when it comes to raw fish, the more the better.

The next course included two dishes that we were both very excited about: first up was the Pork Buns. When we read this, we figured these would be Asian-style pork buns: a gummy, fluffy dough filled with a little blob of pork. But no! These were mini pulled-pork sandwiches on mini pretzel rolls with a sweet onion relish - outstanding. And messy. The sauce on the pork was nice and acidy, not too sweet, sort of like NC-style BBQ, EP's favorite.

Also for this course was the Poutine! The only other time we've had poutine was at Victoria Gastropub in Columbia, where it's made with duck-fat fries, covered with duck confit, gravy, and gruyere cheese. And before last night, we thought this was the best poutine ever. Then we had WK's poutine. It was amazing and completely surpassed Victoria. This poutine was french fries covered in cheddar curd, house-smoked bacon (GIGANTIC lardons, if that's not an oxymoron?), and chicken wing gravy. A-mazing.

For the next course, we had one of the WK flatbreads, presumably cooked in their wood-burning oven. We selected a flatbread with lamb, ramps (first of the season!), and ricotta cheese. It was a nice bite, but we were so full by then, I don't think we could appreciate it fully. We also had broccoli raab with chili flakes, garlic, and a parmesan chip. Unfortunately, this was the weakest dish of the evening - it was very bitter and a little watery.

Despite our fullness, we pressed on and ordered dessert and coffee. The direct-trade Rwandan coffee came in a French press and was strong and delicious. For dessert, we ordered the Neopolitan Sundae, which was absolutely delicious vanilla ice cream, strawberry jam, and sugar-coated chocolate donut holes. PLUS, there was a malted cone on top. Um, HELLO?! Fabulous dessert.

The French press came with a timer so we would know when to press it

What an amazing meal! It was not too expensive either, which means we'll be back ASAP (especially as the weather continues to improve-- they have a great patio with a firepit). Who's got something worth celebrating? We'll take any excuse...

Thanks for a great meal, WK! See you soon!

E & X