brioche for breakfast

One of the best things I always look forward to on weekends: sleeping in on Sunday. On this particular Sunday, I was waken around 11 am (hey, I went to bed around 1:30 am, so ...) when my husband decided to roll out of bed. I asked for thirty more minutes because I had just been dreaming about eating tomatoes and fresh mozzarella (pathetic, I know) and the bed was oh so warm and cozy. And it was Sunday.

About ten minutes pass when I hear the sound of the kettle whistling. The sounds of my wonderful husband making French pressed coffee. My foot sneaks out from beneath the comforters (yes, more than one ... I freeze at night). Brrr, it's warmer in the bed.

"Wake up, wake up ..." I hear as he comes back to check on me. It hasn't been thirty minutes yet. But the thought of fresh coffee. Oh, I'm so torn. Warm bed or coffee?

Suddenly I remembered that I bought a loaf of brioche from Sherman Market the day before. Sleepily, and with my head barely peeking out from beneath the covers, I tell him, "You can slice the brioche and put it in the toaster, then eat it with butter or jam." Funny how clearly I can give directions when it comes to food even though I'm half asleep.

I think, "He's going to wait for me to get up to make anything to eat, or he'll just eat cereal." Nice warm, comfy blankets.

Less then ten minutes later, a lovely smell wafts into the room. Mmmmm ... the smell of toasted brioche! I'm awake, I'm awake!

They sell the brioche as a full loaf for $9, or in thirds for $3. I bought one for us and one for my friend Laura because we have this common obsession affection for brioche. Sherman Market only receives it on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays so if you want one be sure to stop by during the weekend and early because they always sell out! I certainly plan on going back to get some pretty frequently.

Especially if they make Sundays that much more wonderful. And delicious. :)

top of the hub + atlantic fish

Photo is from the Top of the Hub website

We started the new year with good food, fun, and company by having drinks and dinner with my brother-in-law and his wife. We took them to the Top of the Hub in the Prudential Center and luckily managed to find a seat in the lounge for some drinks. It's always fun to take people who have never been there before, even if it's cloudy outside like it was that night. The whole ordeal of trying to find a parking space nearby, walking through the Prudential Center, and then taking an elevator up to the 52nd floor of a building can be quite exhilirating. And then you see the spectacular view from the top.

They feature a pretty nice wine and cocktail menu that may be a little pricy, but we all agreed that the portions are bigger than what you usually expect. The martini and champagne glasses we were served that night were quite large which was quite nice. :)

Even though it was quite cloudy, I managed to snap this photo of Fenway Park all decked out for the Winter Classic that took place earlier that day.

Since we managed to [miraculously] find a parking spot on Newbury Street, we decided to find a nearby restaurant for dinner instead of driving to another neighborhood. We ended up going to Atlantic Fish, a restaurant that we had gone to with my sister-in-law and her mother back in February last year.

It's such a classy joint and after eating there again, I have to say that I'm glad we picked it. Our waiter, Fabian, was great and quite animated (even as he poured out one of the cocktails). He was good at taking a group shot with my camera, too.

We shared the clams casino appetizer. It was delicious! There were six pieces and I think we could've fought each other for seconds. I think next time we go back there I could polish off a whole plate of these with their delicious fresh-out-of-the-oven bread. Yum!



As you can see, our table was full of good food! I had the 2007 Viognier from Miner Wines and it was so good. Marina had the 2008 Sancerre “Les Belles Vignes” from Domaine Fournier and it, too, was good. Our waiter brought the glasses to the table and asked us to guess which was which. It was kind of difficult but you could definitely smell a difference between the two (one was sweeter than the other).

Marina had a grilled yellowfin tuna steak with spinach and lobster mashed potatoes on the side. Those mashed potatoes were amazing! Whomever thought to put lobster in mashed potatoes was a genius.

Tony had the seafood fra diavolo dish which was made with shrimp, scallops, swordfish and mussels in a spicy tomato sauce. The portion was quite a lot so he ended up taking home some leftovers.

I went for the lobster ravioli dish again even though I've tried it before because it is just way too delicious to pass up. They make it with chunks of lobster and shitake mushrooms in a really nice and rich basil cream sauce. I had to ask the waiter for extra bread so that I could sop up the sauce.

Needless to say, we had no room for dessert afterwards and left the restaurant with some very happy bellies. It was such a nice way to ring in the new year!

hing shing pastry

We went to China Pearl for some dim sum on Wednesday (luckily they do dim sum all day until 9 pm!). I think it had been at least one year since either of us had dim sum because I think Tony went with his coworkers from Eaton Vance before he left last December, and I can't remember ever going since then (which is kind of sad).

I guess with my food allergies I was always hesitant about going out for dim sum because I don't know what ingredients they use to make the dumplings, etc. I played it somewhat safe this time (especially after just getting over whatever it was that bothered me during the Christmas holiday) and stuck with mostly shrimp dishes like har gow, and of course, shumai. I couldn't resist eating one of the lo mai gai (lotus leaf wrapped rice and meat) bundles, especially after Tony opened one up and the fragrant smell of the leaves and sticky rice enticed me.

Two days later (and even the day after), I felt fine so I think my fears have been calmed. (Woo hoo!)

They didn't have the egg custard tarts (dan tat) that we both love, so we stopped at the Hing Shing Pastry store on our way back to the car to pick some up. We normally stop at the Eldo Cake House but we parked in the opposite direction this time and thought about trying out a new place. I'm so glad we did!

Hing Shing is small and there are no tables and chairs to sit down at to enjoy your pastry purchases, but they have a large variety of things to choose from both sweet and savory. There were a couple of people ahead of us in line so we patiently waited while the one woman working the front tended to orders and a bunch of men in the kitchen were busy baking and talking.

This rack of pastries caught my eye and come to find out, they are sponge cake. They looked like popovers to me but sure enough, they are sweet and really light and fluffy in texture.

We laughed a little bit when we saw these "big walnut cookies". They were huge! And full of whole, large walnuts.

The woman had just put out a fresh batch of the dan tat so we were pretty psyched.


So we took our pastries, headed back to Somerville and to Bloc 11 for some coffee. I'd say that the dan tat and lattes were quite a perfect combination.

The dan tat were so yummy! I love the crunchiness and flakiness of the crust, and how the egg custard is not overly sweet. I found a recipe to make them at home on Jen's blog, so I might muster up the courage to try it out some day. But making a trip out to Chinatown for some makes it all that more special in the end, and this time I promise I won't wait a whole year to go back!

holiday cookie swap

I know you all know how I have some pretty nice coworkers. I managed to get a small group of them to do a holiday cookie swap at the office, thanks to the help of one of my coworkers, Chris, who shared the idea. It was my very first cookie swap and it was so much fun to see what people came up with.

There were eight of us total and I think everyone came up with really neat treats. Funny how none of us did something easy like chocolate chip cookies.

Chris's fudge

Karoline's ginger cookies

Jeff's coconut macaroons

Tom's molasses cookies

Nathan's rum balls

Antoinette's snickerdoodle cookies

Anne's walnut ball cookies

Everything was delicious! And I love the creative packaging that people came up with. I ended up making those pretzel Rolo pecan treats which, I know wasn't technically a "cookie" per se.

I think the neatest thing that came out of the cookie swap was getting to know some of my coworkers a little better and that we share a passion for baking. One of them commented about how he doesn't like to bake/make things unless he has a purpose so it got me to thinking about doing some sort of monthly cookie swap. Like maybe every third Wednesday a month, if you wanted to participate, you'd bring in 2 dozen cookies/treats to the swap. Then depending on how many people showed up, we'd divi up the goodies for everyone to share and enjoy. After I presented the idea to this coworker, he added the idea where participants could not repeat any cookie/treat that was brought before therefore adding a challenge to be creative and try new [different] recipes. I'll have to see if I can make this happen. :)

pretzel rolo pecan treats

Holy crappers, where did the year go?? To make up for my lack of posting I thought I'd share this recipe for a super easy peasy pretzel Rolo pecan treat that I learned from my husband's aunt Elaine last weekend. Super easy peasy! And super yummy according to my at-home-taste-tester and obliging coworkers. :)

Ingredients:

- a bag of Snyder's butter snap pretzels
- a bag of Rolo candies
- whole, shelled pecans

Directions:

- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Place a piece of foil or parchment paper onto a baking sheet.
- Lay whole pieces of pretzels onto the sheet in one layer.
- Unpeel some Rolos (seriously, this is the hardest part!)
- Refrain from eating a lot of the Rolos. One or two, yes. Handful, no.
- Put one Rolo on top of each pretzel.
- Put one whole pecan piece on top of the Rolo.
- Bake in the oven for 3 minutes (no, not the most efficient use of a 350 degree oven, I know ...)
- Remove from the oven and smoosh each pecan down so that the Rolo gets flattened.
- Let them cool down and then put them in the fridge to harden.
- Enjoy!!

harvard square's oktoberfest

In the trend of late blog posts ... and now in the practice of putting things out of sequential order of when they actually happened it appears ...

We decided to check out the Oktoberfest in Harvard Square a couple of Saturdays ago. Again, another thing we had never done in the 10+ years of living here [sigh]. It was a little too crowded for our tastes so we didn't stick around for too long, but long enough for me to be intrigued by some food related items (of course!). I was mostly curious about watching these two women fry up a serious load of potstickers.




Wow, that's a lotta potstickers! And then we were walking along Church Street and I saw this caramel apple station, which I thought was clever. Messy but clever.


There was all sorts of music and live entertainment going on, beer gardens, people in crazy costumes, a huge variety of ethnic restaurants selling food, and lots and lots of people. Including this man on stilts.
We didn't get any beer but Tony got some delicious Indian food from one of the local restaurants (I was so jealous). Definitely worth checking out if you're a beer fanatic and aren't afraid of people dressed up in strange costumes rubbing up against you in the middle of a street.

verrill farm in concord, ma

This is what happens when I get behind in blogging: we go somewhere or do something and it takes me over a week to write about it. In this particular case, I had convinced my husband to make a stop at Verrill Farm in Concord after we made a trip out to the DeCordova Museum since we had Columbus Day off. In the ten years I've lived in Massachusetts - and despite the number of times we've driven near it going back and forth to Clinton - we have never actually stopped in to check out the farm. They had rebuilt the entire place after a fire destroyed the farm last year, so since we were in the area we stopped by to see what it was like inside.

The store and bakery is cute and reminds me a little of Russo's in Watertown, although it's not nearly as big. There's a whole range of fresh produce - most of it homegrown - including tomatoes, winter squash, kale, herbs, cucumbers, kohlrabi, and more.

I managed to find a nice little pumpkin to carve into. (Note to self: try not to look so irritated whenever your husband takes photographs of you.)

I had already done the grocery shopping for the next few days (meaning, I didn't know we were going to the farm) so I didn't really "need" anything there, but I couldn't resist their homegrown brussel sprouts. And as I started to select some, a nice man came by with a load of freshly picked stock to replenish the stash.



They have a bakery and a deli (and they do catering too), so we were enticed by the aromas of fresh pastries. I saw these and thought that it would be a good combination for scones.


They had tons of squash and pumpkins and mums outside the store. Some were a little odd looking, like these large greenish ones.


So what do you do with so much fresh produce in the fall? Roast 'em! For dinner that night, I made us pork chops and topped them with some sauteed onions. And on the side we had roasted brussel sprouts, butternut squash, and potatoes.

Is it weird that one of my most favorite smells is the smell of sauteeing onions?? I love how the smell fills the kitchen every time I make them. They're so deliciously easy to do: take one large onion (usually go for the sweeter kinds, especially Vidalias when they are in season), cut it in half, then cut into thin strips. Melt 1/2 a stick of butter (I know, I didn't say it was non/low fat!) in a non-stick pan over medium heat. Add the onion, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Let it cook for about 3-4 minutes before stirring. Then stir every few minutes as needed. It should start to turn brown in color and smell good. You can turn the heat down to low and just stir once in a while until they are nicely limp and very caramelly brown in color. Serve and enjoy.

I find roasting vegetables, especially a huge tray of them like this, is the easiest and simplest way to enjoy them. Cut the vegetables into equal sized pieces, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with a little bit of sea salt and black pepper, then stick it in a 425 degree oven for 40-50 minutes (depending on how large the pieces are). You may want to stir or flip them half way through the process but it's generally a no-brainer way of cooking them.

I have to say, we dined like kings that night. The pork chops were so nice and thick and I luckily didn't overcook them.

I started out by rubbing them with a little bit of olive oil and then seasoning them with sea salt, black pepper, dried basil, and dried oregano on both sides. Place them into a nonstick pan heated on medium heat. Let them cook for about 4 minutes on each side (just to brown them), then put a piece of foil on top of the entire pan and transfer it to a 450 degree oven. (Make sure that your pan doesn't have any plastic parts.) I kept them in the oven for about 12 mintues since they were on the thicker side (our internal thermometer that could go inside the oven broke unfortunately). Remove from the oven and keep the foil on as you let them rest for about 8-10 minutes. This is a good time to plate everything else up and get the vino pouring.

Serve to a hungry husband and smile as it disappears. :)