by Sam Tackeff | Sep 28, 2013 | Meat, Restaurants
Last night was an unexpected night on the town, and since I’m a homebody most of the time, was quite the adventure! After leaving work a little early, we went hunting for goodies at the record store in Allston (we left with some Dave Brubeck), and then headed back to the Waterfront for dinner.
After taking part in the Lamb Pro-Am this summer (and winning! yep, I’m a lamb-pion), I’ve been pining to head back to the DiBiccari brothers’ Tavern Road for dinner – and finally got the chance to. The restaurant is a great addition to the Fort Point Congress street corridor of the Boston Waterfront, and it’s a shame that more people don’t know about it! The food is excellent, well priced, and there’s some forward culinary thinking going on. This time around, I had the bluefish pâté to start, which comes with these salty-crispy buttery homemade crackers that were the perfect spread vehicle. (Bluefish pâté is one of my favorite New England foods, and I try to treat myself whenever I see it on a menu. Theirs is a winner.) Devon had the duck prosciutto, which was a little small portion wise – only a few slices, but quite good. (If you get a chance, Ruhlman’s duck prosciutto is a great home curing project.) They serve these delightful warm rolls, with some unexpected whipped citrus butter, which I’d eat by itself by the spoonful. For dinner, our friend Allison got the citrus marinated smoked chicken, Devon got a bowl of meaty bolognese with perfectly tender pasta, and I went with the harissa-rubbed roasted lamb, with roasted hubbard squash, silky squash puree, and Marfax beans.
We left full and happy, and stumbled out across the street to Drink to assess our luck with the line. The wait didn’t seem too bad, and we happened to be in line in front of the Scott Caan/Ryan Gosling look-alike who works in the Waterfront, so I didn’t mind waiting for a bit. (Yes, seriously, this guy looks just enough like Ryan Gosling that I usually do a double take when I see him crossing the street.) By 9:15, I hadn’t ordered my Ramos Gin Fizz yet, and was starting to get a little bit cranky. Allison mentioned unbaked cookie dough in her freezer, and so we gave up our spot, and made a b-line to her apartment in Charlestown. The evening ended with warm cookies, Ghostbusters, and me passed out on her couch.
We got home sometime past midnight, and today ended up being quite the lazy Saturday, as I missed my alarm for the gym… Instead, we ran errands – the bank, the post office to send in Devon’s passport application, brunch, and a long nap. In the early evening, I went for a manicure at Miniluxe, had matcha at Peet’s, and headed home to cook this up for dinner:
Not your regular beef and broccoli – I’m always nostalgic for takeout style beef and broccoli, but I prefer a lighter, brighter sauce, more like what you’d find in Vietnamese cooking: meat flavored with lime, and fish sauce, rather than your average thick brown slurry. Poking around my fridge tonight, I found some beef stir-fry meat from the butcher that I needed to use, and some broccoli that was on the edge of leaving us. I steamed the broccoli for 6 minutes in the microwave, got my cast iron pan nice and hot, added a good glug of oil, tipped in my beef, and spread it about my pan so it wouldn’t be crowded and steam. I didn’t touch it for three minutes, so the bottom would get brown and crispy. While the meat cooked, I made my sauce – the juice of one lime, about a tablespoon of Red Boat Fish sauce, and a teaspoon of piloncillo (brown sugar), to round things out. I flipped the beef, cooked for another minute until it was just cooked through, added the now-steamed broccoli, poured on the sauce, and tossed. After tasting, I finished with just a sprinkle of Maldon salt, and we had a feast. The sauce was just enough for about 3/4 lb. of meat and a 12 ounces of broccoli, but I’d double it if you have any more meat and veg than that.
Tavern Road
www.tavernroad.com
343 Congress Street
Fort Point, Boston
Drink
http://drinkfortpoint.com/
348 Congress Street
Fort Point, Boston
by Sam Tackeff | Sep 26, 2013 | Art, Books
The street pianos have arrived! 75 pianos have been installed around the Boston area, each painted by a local artist. I found two today, the first was this glorious ‘Mericana piano over by the Boston Children’s Museum. (Yes, that’s ‘merica and Americana, in one awesome extra made up word for you.) This piano was decorated by Amanda Baldi, hosted by Children’s Museum and donated by Sarah Asetsano. A few years ago when we had painted cows everywhere I thought that was pretty cool, but pianos! I hope people play them. I touched the keys apprehensively today, but maybe I’ll sit down and actually take some time with one in the next few weeks.
Here’s the second one I came across at the Greenway by the North End – a sort of ombre faux wood grain thing going on, by artist Tova Speter, hosted by Greenway and donated by Berklee College. I’m generally a big fan of public art, even if it’s a little out there, wacky, or ugly – there’s no better public conversation starter – and most of the time the art is delightful. These will be up for just a few weeks, and I hope people get as much a kick out of them as I am.
After a long, busy (but fun!) day at work, I was looking very forward to my evening plans! Tonight was our second monthly Boozy Book Club – with several women from my gym. Jacqueline was the gracious hostess this go around, and I was greeted enthusiastically at the door by her sweet pup Simone (Momo!).
You guys.. this dog.
I’m obsessed with Frenchies, religiously read The Daily Wag, and lust after my own. The first five minutes I pretty much completely ignored my friends so I could get some puppy love. Look at that face!
In fact, I was so enamored, that I failed at getting good photos of the food, because I was so distracted. But the food! Jacqueline made a feast for us:
The Menu:
Sweet potato beefy chili
Sesame crackers, guacamole, and grilled spiced chicken
Bacon roasted brussels sprouts with balsamic glaze
Carrot and beet slaw with pistachios
Rolled prosciutto, walnuts and comb honey
For dessert, Bets brought a gorgeous apple tart (with the apples perfectly arranged), and Lisa brought baked figs wrapped in prosciutto.
At some point, we ended up chatting about the book – Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter. Because apparently I’m incapable of reading anymore, this was the second book club that I’ve shown up without finishing the book. Despite the fact that I’ve actually had this book on my bedside for two straight months. And, yes, if you’re paying attention, that’s two out of two delinquencies. We’re slated to read the cult classic, Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent next month, so hopefully I’ll be on top of things.
What are you reading?
by Sam Tackeff | Sep 25, 2013 | Challenge, Culinary Disaster
Before we talk soup, here’s something nice. I get quite a few press releases sent my way, and usually nothing much happens with them other than me hitting the delete button and grumbling that they don’t just auto-delete themselves. Sorry, PR flack, but so many of these emails are terribly boring, and I don’t have need for your elbow salve/yarns made of the hair of unicorns/metal shaker cups that glow purple and are eco-friendly. Okay, sometimes I forward the best of the best to my friends, and we have a good laugh – such as “a mustache made for cats“. Seriously, that was the best press release ever.
But this video is nice, and I think that Bee Raw’s Save the Bees Fund is pretty rad. Launched earlier this year to help research and combat the global die-off of the honey bees (yeah, press release words verbatim), these guys are doing some cool things. And I think that bees are the bee’s knees. Wait, can they be? Oh my god, can they bee??
If you have 9 minutes, or even just a few, go ahead and give it a look.
Zeke’s Maine Hive Dive from Jason Elon Goodman on Vimeo.
Okay, now that my PSA is out of the way, here’s my dinner: grilled chicken, and some of the sweetest little dry farmed tomatoes I’ve ever had. Mmmm dry farmed tomatoes. Little orbs of summer. Even though it’s fall already. Sigh. (Hint, no soup in the picture.)
So the soup. These tomatoes were actually supposed to go in my salad, and that my vegetable course was going to be a curried zucchini soup, made in my Vitamix blender. There’s this fancy-schmancy “hot soup” setting, where you put in all your ingredients, whirr for several minutes, and it heats up for you. I was skeptical, but decided to just go for it tonight.
And by go for it, I mean… not actually think the process out.
Do you know what happens when you put raw zucchini, raw spices, and water in a blender? Well, even with the soup getting hot (which admittedly, it did completely successfully), I also got myself a blenderful of bland raw soup. Raw. Raw zucchini, raw spices.
Rather than being defeated, I chopped up a few extra tomatoes on our plates, ate dinner, and then simmered my raw soup for half an hour on the stove top until it became the curried zucchini soup I was hoping for. And I’ll just have to eat it tomorrow – which, bonus! will give the flavors real time to develop.
Not everything that comes out of this kitchen is a success, but I do take a great deal of pleasure in trial and error.
by Sam Tackeff | Sep 24, 2013 | Books, Local stores, Meat
The last Tuesday of the month is the day I pick up my meat club allotment at the best butcher shop in town – M.F. Dulock, in Somerville. For $50, I left with a nice sized package of spicy beef sausage, stew meat, stir fry meat, goat chops and pork jowl – enough to last me several weeks. The meat is pasture raised, broken down by the people handing it to me. It makes me a really happy camper.
I wish I had more exciting stories to tell you, but here’s what’s plaguing me today: I have $11.30 in library fines. I swear I’m not a jerk – it was an accident involving eight items that were overdue for three days. And two of those were DVD’s. And apparently, when you have an excess of $5 in fines, they shut off your ability to download digital items, until you head into the library and pay up. And they also disable your ability to the pay the fines online. This makes me grumbly. Let me give you my money! I might even donate a little extra every time I had to pay a fine if I could do it from the comfort of my own home.
Okay, but what does this mean for me exactly?
It means that I can’t download the audio book that I’ve been queuing patiently for for two months.
Let me pay you money, library, and let me download my Wallander audiobook!
Which reminds me. I probably should get around to trying Audible.com. Does anyone use it? Is it worth it? Inquiring minds want to know. I’ve been trying to stick to this free audiobook from the libary thing, but apparently it raises my general stress level to “unacceptable neuroses”.
Okay, that’s enough complaining. I suppose I should mention something about my almost favorite part of the day – dinner! (Second only to Second Lunch.)
My first order of business was to fry up a merguez burger that I was planning on eating on some wilted greens with lemon. After frying the first side for a few minutes, I got a call from Devon letting me know that he needed to be picked up, so I turned off the heat, flipped the burger, and popped the lid on, hoping for the best. When I returned less than 20 minutes later, the burger was browned nicely on both sides, and cooked perfectly through. A meaty-miracle!
I’ll admit though, that somehow in the 20 minutes I forgot all about the wilted greens. By the time we got home I was starving, so the burger became my appetizer. Devon came back hungry, so I decided to put the “red hot beef” sausage from meat club in the pan – which halfway through cooking I determined was too spicy for him (it was so spicy that I nearly was choking on the smoke – just the way I like it). So he got refried beans and eggs cooked in spicy sausage drippings, and I ate a piece of sausage, and no vegetables, and just decided that I’d be okay with it, because sometimes all you want is a piece of meaty goodness, and nothing else. Sometimes, being an adult is *the best*.
by Sam Tackeff | Sep 23, 2013 | Uncategorized
Today I tackled a nagging task – something that has been plaguing me for nearly a year – and I can’t tell you how much better I feel. My actions didn’t completely solve the problem, but even the small steps forward were a huge weight lifted. Maybe you have something holding you back? Something that started off as a small annoyance that you’ve left for a little too long? You don’t need anyone to give you permission to fix it – but I’ll give it to you anyway. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay. Just get yourself moving. Just take the baby step. Do it! Start!
I spent a good deal of my day in limbo – that first baby step turned out to be slightly more complicated than I’d have hoped. While waiting, I visited my mom’s preschool class, and had lunch with the kiddos.
First we had “lunch” in the playground sandpit, where I was surrounded by a group of eager children scooping sand by the spoonful into my bowl. “It’s chili!” I started off. “What are you putting in it?”. The great thing about imaginary chili is that you can spend minutes at a time naming off ingredients for them to add. “Do you like avocados?” (Mixed reviews). “Where’s the cheese?!” I’d ask, as someone eagerly dumped more sand into my bowl. The older ones would start rattling off ingredients of their own. “Chile Peppers!” “Red or Green?”. And then eventually we all broke out giggling when someone threw in a handful of “chocolate chips”. At that point we decided that it was actually imaginary oatmeal, but before we could get really started, it was time to head inside.
Later, at lunch, I had a two year old in a spider man outfit repeatedly lick me, and a four year old ask if I’d like to see his butt. I opened up gogurt, and apple carrot pouches, encouraged a few more bites of sandwich, and then confused several of them when I admitted that I don’t like raisins. Preschoolers are rad, and a good time was had by all. Sometimes I’m pretty sure that I relate better with certain four year olds than I do adults.
After work, my mom and I headed over to the Juicery to grab a pick me up – it’s a local spot owned by the older brother of a kid I went to elementary school with. Technically I went to school with him too, but he was definitely “a big brother”, and I still see him that way. It’s good to see that business is doing well, and that the juice, as always, is delicious.
The Juicery
Juicery.com
51 Hanover St Portsmouth, NH 03801
(603) 431-0693
