AN ITALIAN AMERICAN DINNER AT GIACOMO'S

I decided to emphasize the fact that Giacomo's is a truly Italian-American restaurant in my title, just so people don't get confused and think they'll be eating an authentic Italian meal. There's a pretty big difference between true Italian food and the Americanized version of it. (which isn't all that suprising, you can say this of all cuisines). and Giacomo's does a really good job of putting out tasty Italian-American food.

So for those who don't know, Giacomo's is a pretty famous restaurant in Boston. They have two locations. One in the North End and the other in the South End on Columbus. Leah and I decided to have dinner at the South End location this past Monday. I've actually never been to the location in the North End, because I know that I'll never find parking and in addition, Giacomo's doesn't take reservations, so the North End location is famous for having a very long line. On the other hand, the South End location is less well known. Parking is still nearly impossible to find, and after circling a few times, Leah and I gave up and went for the improvised valet parking from Giacomo's and paid $10 for parking. (yes, that seems pretty expensive, but we split it, and you gotta factor in the temperature, around 25F, and the fact that we were both starving.)

On to dinner. We were lucky that there were a number of tables opening up when we arrived, so after a very brief wait, we were seated near the front window. The rest of the restaurant filled up pretty quickly afterwards. Now, the thing with Giacomo's being a famous Italian American restaurant in Boston is that it's crowded and very very loud. Plus people are, for some reason, super boisterous when they eat there. So it's not a place for quiet conversation. We were pretty quick in deciding what we wanted to order. I got a lemon fettucine with shrimp and scallops and leah got a fettucine with peas and prosciutto in a cream sauce. I actually would've picked the famous pumpkin ravioli, but I knew I was coming down with a cold, and wanted to avoid anything with dairy or cream (which is actually really hard to do at Giacomo's. I'd say 2/3 of the entrees featured cream or dairy).

So here's leah's dinner:

and here's mine:
I found mine pretty tasty, especially after i added some red pepper flakes, though it was a bit oily. the thing i like the most is the fact that the pasta is all handmade and you can really tell. Plus all the dishes are a rather large size. I think leah also enjoyed her entree, especially since she finished it all.

Service for our table was pretty crappy. It just seemed like our waiter was totally new and out of it. It was nearly impossible to track him down, and he didn't tell us what the specials were. (we overheard them being recited to a neighboring table. ) And i would've seriously considered the mushroom ravioli. Ah well, i guess it'll be something to try next time. Our food did come out pretty quickly, which was a good thing. We skipped dessert cause after glancing at the menu, I didn't truly find anything new or interesting.

All in all, we still had a pretty great dinner. The "valet" guy even saw us paying up and brought our car around for us. And even with the parking included, you can still have dinner for under $20- $25, which is pretty great deal in the South End. So if you're ever on Columbus and looking for a place to grab a hearty meal, definetly check out Giacomo's and have some yummy homemade pasta.

TORO! TORO!

Fine. This place is only called toro. (not in reference to the fish, in japanese, but the bull, in spanish). And this being a Spanish Tapas restaurant/bar, I thought i'd invoke what the Spanish call out during a bullfight. But back to the review. Last night Arti, Karishma and I had dinner at Ken Oringer's new tapas bar in the South End. Now, for those of you who don't know, Ken Origner is one of those Boston celebrity chefs. He also co-owns Clio and Uni in the Eliot Hotel. This new resturant just opened a month or two ago, and I heard it was actually affordable (unlike the other two places), so I definetly wanted to try it out. Plus, it was cool to actually see the chef/owner serving ppl and working at his new place.

So when Arti and I arrived at the restaurant, at 6:15ish, there were some people in the restaurants, but still a good number of tables left. They wouldn't seat us until the whole party arrived and they don't take reservations, so we waited at the stainless steel bar where we both got a glass of cava (a spanish sparkling white wine). I enjoyed my glass of cava, but it was a little sweet, though arti enjoyed it much more than i did. She didn't like her glass of rose cava which was more dry. We also had time to check out the place. It has nice exposed beams, brick walls, high ceilings and big windows. Yet it was still dark inside. I definelty liked it. Oh, and it had an open kitchen and I like those. Unfortunately, very soon after we arrived, the restaurant and bar filled up very quickly. When Karishma got there, we were told it'd be a 45 minute wait for a table. (which sucked since we'd already been in the place for like 20 minutes) So my advice is to get there early and make sure your whole party is present.

Luckily, we were able to snag two extra seats at the bar that were right next to ours, so all three of us were able to sit there and have dinner. Sometimes I actually enjoy sitting at the bar more than at a table. Here, it was sort of mixed. Our bartender was very friendly, but he was the only one there. So he not only had to handle drinks, but also serve all the ppl crowded around the bar and we were neglected for various periods of time. Not as bad as Pomodoro, but not great either. The food made up for this though. And here's what Arti and I shared:

we started with these fried green peppers. they're seasoned with just sea salt and are totally tasty. apparently 1 in 10 of them are supposed to be hot, but i had a hot one and it really is a very mild heat. Definetly try these. I almost wanted to get a second order.

Then we got these potatoes. Which are fried and served ontop of a tomato sauce. But the best part of the dish was dipping it in the delicious garlic ailioli. sorry for the blurry pic.

Ok. this next dish was a little disappointing for me. It's a dish of mushrooms served with an egg and some foam. The foam is tasteless, but it's supposed to look like the white of the egg, get it? at any rate, i think the mushrooms could've been more flavorful, and when they arrived at the table, they were just warm.

Next up was the grilled corn. I think this was my favorite dish of the night. Not as good as the grilled corn from Cafe Havana in soho, but still really tasty, with the hint of chili, lime and cheese.

And our final tapas was smoked duck. Which actually tasted like it'd also been fried, due to the crispiness of the skin. I also really liked this.We finished off our meal with three orders of churros with chocolate. As in fried dough with powdered sugar and a side of chocolate sauce for dipping. I think this was the most disappointing dish of the night. If they were going for spanish or mexican style churros, the batter should've been much denser. And i wouldn't have minded some cinnamon sugar. If they were going for a little version of the churro, then it should've been much lighter. Basically, these tasted like the frying oil temp was a bit too low, causing the batter to absorb too much oil and become a bit heavy. They were tasty, I just didn't love it, and don't think i'd be getting again.

So my favorites were the peppers, duck and corn. The price of the tapas ranged from $3-$12, though the vast majority stayed in the $6-$9 dollar range, so the standard tapas price range. I think that's pretty nice, given the setting, the famous chef and quality of food. I'll admit that the plates tended towards the smaller side, but nothing completely unreasonable. If you don't drink, I think you can still have a satisfying meal in the hi-2os range. And i certainly look foward to returning and trying some of the plates that I missed.

ZON'S, JAMAICA PLAIN

I apologize, I couldn't come up with a creative title. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do. And i also need to apologize cause this post will involve no pictures. (though the effort was made. I had my camera phone, but it was just too dark for anything to come out) and Zon's, a neighborhood restaurant in JP, is definetly post-worthy, so you'll just have to live without pics. ( i guess i could steal them off the zon's website, but i'm not gonna bother doing that when you can just go over to their website yourself http://zonsjp.com/).

I had dinner last night with katie and dustin. Katie likes going to restaurants that have "tasty" food. I had known of zon's for a while, I drove by it everytime I went to JP on my way to other restaurants, but never made it there, so after checking out the website and approving of the menu, we all headed over. So the thing with zon's is that they're all about serving comfort food, and they certainly do it in an excellent setting. If you actually went over to the zon's website, you'll notice that the restaurants has deep red walls. This is enhanced by the dark furniture, black ceilings and totally funky decor. (like the cool chandelier with the plant in it that katie pointed out) It's kinda like a friend's cool apartment that you wish you could have, but are too lazy to accomplish. The first thing i saw when I walked into the place were the nice comfy couches that served as the waiting area and a really cute, tiny bar to the right of the entrance.

On the left was the dining room. Which wasn't tiny, but wasn't huge either, and made for a very nice, comfy setting where you could observe other ppl and still have a dinner conversation. And what I observed was that most people there looked like locals. Dressed down and out for a casual dinner. So like i said, this place is all about comfort food. Which means that the meau was filled with things like mac and cheese (in 3 versions), burgers, sandwiches and pastas. But they were all very appealing and reasonably priced. Katie ordered a bowl of tomato soup (apparently a traditional Italian version that was thickened with bread) with a spinach and goat cheese salad. Dustin got parpadelle(aka thick handcut pasta) with salmon and other stuff in a light cream sauce. I got a turkey burger with a side of handcut fries. I was won over by the burger cause it was embellished with gruyere and portabello mushrooms. (plus i wanted the fries).

The service was pretty casual and friendly. Not hugely attentive, but I have no major complaints. At least she brought bread and kept the water full (wow, after living in boston, my standards for service have truly been lowered). Our entrees arrived promptly and i think both katie and i were a little jealous of dustin's pasta which looked great. However, i thoroughly enjoyed my turkey burger, especially with the portobello mushroom that added a nice texture and flavor. Despite the fact that at $13 this was the most expensive turkey burger I've ever had (it topped the $12 turkey burger at had at Diner in Union Sq.), the size and condiments made it worth it. (unlike the buger at Diner. if you're ever in union sq, go eat at republic instead) Maybe katie will post and add some comments about her dinner.

Of course we had to order dessert after dinner. And we all agreed to share the plate of ice cream sandwiches. When it arrived, it looked totally cool. The chef decided to slice the sandwiches into quarters and then stacked them in this crazy tall arrangement and sprinkled the entire thing with chocolate and caramel sauce. There were two types of sandwiches, chocolate cookies with what we guessed was a mocha oreo ice cream and chocolate chip cookie with chocolate ice cream with choco chips and nuts (i said it was kinda like rocky road without the marshmallows). Now that i think of it, maybe they got their ice cream from jp licks, which is just down the street. These were totally yummy and a great way to finish off dinner. And it was actually so big that we still had a little quarter of sandwich left even though we all had a few pieces, definetly a dessert you should share.

So in conclusion, I was very happy with my dinner at zon's. And in general, I'm pretty happy with all the dinner's that i've had in jp. I kinda compare the neighborhood to a mini south end. Lots of good restaurants in a small area, and no matter where you go, you'll pretty much have a solid dinner. so if you have a car, definetly get out of boston and give the restaurants in jp a try.

MARVELOUS MINESTRONE SOUP

Ok ok. I know i'm on this whole soup kick. But I've discovered it's the best thing to make when you've got a whole lot of produce and don't really know what to do with it. Anyway, it's winter. So remember that Boston Organic's order I got last week? Well, I still had mushrooms, lettuce, carrots and zucchinis left over from it. I couldn't come up with anything creative to make, so I turned to the recipes on foodtv.com and typed in zucchini. At first, I considered making some type of pasta with veggies, but in the end, I found a recipe for minestrone soup. It's by Michael Chiarello and it's pretty easy. (I also liked the fact that the name of the recipe was Super Quick Minestrone). So here are the ingredients below:

1 cup (4 ounces) tubetti pasta, or other small pasta shape
Extra-virgin olive oil
6 cups chicken stock
1/4 pound pancetta, cut into 3 pieces
6 medium garlic cloves, each cut in 1/2 lengthwise
2 cups finely chopped yellow onions (2 small onions)
1 cup small-diced celery (2 medium stalks)
1 cup small-diced carrots (2 to 3 medium carrots)
1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary or thyme leaves
1 (14-ounce) can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes
4 cups small-diced zucchini (green/yellow) (5 small zucchini)
2 cups small-diced, peeled russet potatoes (1 large russet)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan

I was missing some items and substituted other items. I picked up onions, cannellini beans and garlic at the market and decided to omit the celery, potatoes, pasta and pancetta. (the whole idea was to use up what i already had at home, so i didn't want to be purchasing more stuff unless it was actually necessary). Also, I looked at a few recipes before I picked the Michael Chiarello one, and a lot of ppl added swiss chard, so i figured red leaf lettuce was pretty similar and added that in too. Most of the work for this recipe is involved in chopping everything up. So here are my chopped onion, garlic, carrots and zucchini. First, you want brown your garlic in a heated pan with olive oil. Then you toss in you carrots and onions. Here's a pic of those ingredients cooking away in my pot. You cook those for about 8 minutes, until they're soft.Meanwhile, you heat the chicken stock in a separate pot. When the veggies are soft, you toss in the beans (I picked mini cannellini beans, rather than the bigs ones.) Here's a pic of them below. I learned it's important to rinse these guys off, even where they're coming out of a can, cause in the can, they're surrounded by this very gooey substance and you wanna get rid of that.

and you also toss in the rest of your veggies. In the pic below, i've got my zucchini, mushrooms, lettuce and a can of peel, crushed tomatoes. Now you're supposed to put in a can of peeled diced tomatoes, but i didn't have those, and this turned out fine. and toss in your herb of choice (i used thyme).here's what it all looks like before the tomatoes are added. (colorful, huh?) once i added those, everything turned red. the last step is to add the warmed chicken stock. Then you just bring the whole thing to a boil and it's all done.
Here's the final product in my little bowl. So the best suggestion in this recipe was at the very end, where he suggests that you serve with olive oil and parmesan cheese. let me just say, this is a totally necessary step. I sprinkled on some high quality olive oil (notice the yellow splotches on top) which added a bit of sweetness and complexity to the whole thing and i grated on some pecorino romano cheese (i'm all out of parmesan at home, but this is a good substitute). I was very happy with the results. Lots of fresh veggies in a yummy filling soup and leah enjoyed it too (i brought some to work so she could eat dinner). and it really was super fast and easy. so if you ever have a bunch of veggies lying around and you need to do something with them, try out this recipe. I promise you won't be disappointed.

A SEASON FOR SOUPS

I was trying to think of different creative things to do with my Boston Organics order and I came up with the idea of making a potato-squash-cheddar soup. Kinda like a cross between a butternut squash soup and a potato cheddar soup, but with the addition of sweet potato squash. I would've loved to have photographed the whole process for you, but after the second pic, I realized that I was running low on batteries. And since i wanted to give you all a pic of the final product, I decided to save the batteries for this last photo. Here's my soup below.
Also, i didn't follow a recipe. I kinda made it up as i went along. to be honest, once you've made one soup and gotten down the basics, it's not that hard to make another soup.

So here's what i did. I first infused some hot olive oil with fresh thyme. Be careful when you do this, cause I learned that thyme burns pretty damn quickly. (unlike the rosemary i used for my mushroom soup.) then i threw in a random assortment of chopped garlic and shallots. Meanwhile, i prepped the sweet potato squash by cutting it in half, scooping out the seeds and sprinkling it with olive oil, salt and pepper. That and the butternut squash (that'd already been cleaned, courtesy of russo's) went into a 425F oven. Here's the sweet potato squash:
Back to the thyme, shallots and garlic. I cubed up my potatoes and sauteed those in the olive oil until they were cooked, but still firm. Here they are below:
I removed half of the cubes and set them aside. Then I added in 3 cans of chicken broth and let the whole thing summer while waiting for my squash to cook. When the sweet potato squash was cooked until soft, i chopped it up and tossed it into the chicken broth. With the butternut squash, i cooked it until it was still a bit firm, and then cut that into cubes and put it aside. Now that everything was soft (potato, butternut squash and sweet potato squash) I took out my handblender and pureed it all until it was smooth. I grated 8 oz. of cheddar cheese and tossed that in and i finished it all off by returning the cubed potatoes and butternut squash to the soup.

So how'd it all turn out? well, that squash really sweetend the soup a lot more than i thought it would and also masked the flavor of the cheese. so i added more salt and i think i should've used less squash. otherwise, it turned out to be a pretty tasty soup. I liked the chunks of potato and butternut squash, cause i'm a big fan of textures. so next time you're given a sweet potato squash, try to be creative and come up with your own squash soup.

DELIVERY FROM BOSTON ORGANICS

I had promised to update you guys on my boston organics delivery and it arrived today. So look at the pretty pics of all the fresh fruits and veggies i got!I've already eaten one bosc pear. And i was happy to see avocados and kiwis, which i love to eat, but never buy. in the brown bag are crimini mushrooms (the irony is that i just bought some last week) and there are yukon potatoes in the plastic bag. also, look at this pic.

In the top left hand corner there was this funny looking squash that'd I've never seen before. I tried figuring out what it was by going to the boston organics website, but nothing was listed, so i resorted to google. Turns out this is a sweet potato squash. I don't cook squash often, this will be a first, but apparently, you can cook it like a butternut squash. Speaking of which, i think i have butternut squash at home. so maybe i'll throw them together and make something.

I'm very happy with my delivery. It's got all this good food and it really wasn't that expensive. in addition to the fact that it took no work on my part. I took me like 10 minutes online to register and then i get the drop offs at my work. it's a win win situation. Now to carry it all home and make yummy stuff!

MUSHROOM SOUP AND BRUNCH AT AQUITAINE

I promised you all more posts this week, so here's another post to entertain you all (and myself, of course). As you all know, I'm a loyal reader of the Amateur Gourmet's blog. and last week he made some really yummy mushroom soup. After looking at the ingredient list, I decided that I wanted to try out the same recipe, with some Minty Choco Chip modifications. Now, I did not photograph and document that whole process, and I'm not gonna repeat the recipe here, cause the Amateur Gourmet already did it, so if you wanna see all that, just click over to his blog and read the post titled "Make Room for Mushroom Soup."(I'm not good at coming up with witty post titles like him)

Here are the changes I made. Rather than using just shitake and button mushrooms for the fresh mushrooms, I actually used a package of crimini mushrooms too. So in total, I had 4 types of mushrooms going. Dried porcinis (i opened up my last package from Italy, meaning it's time for another trip to Europe), plus fresh crimini, shitake and buttons. Also, I replaced the heavy cream with half and half, it makes the soup a little lighter. Lastly, I poured in half a cup of white wine at the end. And really good white wine (some German risling that i had leftover from Thanksgiving). I think the wine really made a huge difference. But the entire thing was so yummy and not hard to make at all. I spooned it down with a nice baguette on the side. So definetly try it out sometime.

As for other food adventures this weekend, I will now review Aquitaine in the South End. (There's another Aquitaine in Chestnut Hill, but I've never been to that one). In the past, I loved meeting up with my friends at Aquitaine on Saturday for brunch, cause they have this cool prix fixe menu, which is only like $10. It's an excellent deal for a restaurant in the South End. On Sunday, Leah and I went down to the South End hoping to finally try out Perdix. We got a great parking space and walked into the restaurant only to find out it didn't open until 11. (It was 10:20 when we arrived). So we ran across the street and were lucky to find an open table at Aquitaine.

We were seated right away at a booth in the back and it was all very lovely. It's a beautiful restaurant with big windows and high ceilings, so we could see the snow falling outside while we were all warm inside. We decided what we wanted pretty quickly. Leah got the Brioche french toast with bacon. I got the Eggs benedict (but with tomatoes and avocado rather than ham). But that was about the only thing that happened quickly. It took our waitress a good long time to actually take our order and then it took at least another half hour before we even saw our entrees, which kinda sucked cause we were hungry. But like i sad, i've been to Aquitaine many times before, and this is the first time that service has been poor, so i'll give them a break.

anyway, maybe the kitchen was backed up or maybe they were going through a staff change. You never know what could be happening in the back. but here's a pic of leah's entree. i apologize for the blurry pics from my phone cam, but at least you're getting a pic. two big pieces of french toast. apparently they were skimpy on the pear compote, though.and here are my eggs benedict. very colorful plate. they were ok, but you could tell that they'd been sitting in the kitchen for a while, because they were lukewarm, and i am a big fan of very hot food. The eggs yolks are supposed to be runny, but by the time the eggs got to me, they had totally congealed and the toasted english muffins were totally cold. The potatoes were great though. and i ate it all down anyway, cause i was hungry. I think the best thing to do is avoid Aquitaine for sunday brunch. they're just too busy and packed. A much better time to go is Saturday morning, cause then you can have the prix fixe brunch and hopefully, you're entree will arrive promptly and still warm. Try it out though, all restaurants have an off day every now and again.

FRESH FRUITS AND VEGGIES DELIVERED TO MY DOOR

i know i've neglected the blog for nearly a week now. but honestly, i haven't eaten anything great enough to blog about. i did have an ice cream at jp licks with katie earlier this week, but we both forgot cameras and cell phones, so i'll blog about them when i return and can take pics. don't get the turtle ice cream, though. stick with the coffee oreo. i did have dinner and drinks at Eastern Standard last night, but since they're my neighbors, i've opted not to blog about my numberous eating experiences there. suffice it to say, eat at the bar over getting a table. order the pim 75 which is an excellent drink (both katie and i enjoyed it immensely) and the squash soup is also very tasty.

i promise to try and blog more this week, though it's unlikely to happen since i'll be spending most of the week working towards the south end holiday market next weekend. but come visit me there and i'll give you hot chocolate samples. ok, back to the title of this post. So at some point last year, I was visiting my cousin Cindy in Berkeley. And she was a member of this really cool veggie/fruit delivery service. Basically, she paid $25 a week and this company would put together local fresh fruits and veggies, whatever happened to be in season, and pack it into a box and deliver it once a week.

now, i thought that was a super cool idea. and one that'd work well in california since they're all into fresh food and organic stuff. i thought it'd never be seen in boston. but i was wrong. i was reading the improper bostonian a few weeks ago, and they wrote about a service in boston that did the exact same thing. it's called Boston Organics and here's their website. http://www.bostonorganics.com/. So i've just signed up for this service and here's what I did. I signed up for the $25 delivery, except i got it for every other week. (since I live alone, i can't eat a whole box of fruits and veggies by myself every week, so I was happy to see this option). Also, there are different options to pick from. I chose the 50% fruit/50% veggie option. But you can get like 2/3 veggies or 2/3 fruit, etc. And they let me pick stuff that i never wanted delivered. I'm a picky eater, so i was also happy to get rid of stuff like bananas, eggplants, melons(i have an allergy), and various berries.

Everything that I'm given will be organic. And the delivery's free. I'm having it delivered to work since I'm here all the time, but they'll also leave it on your doorstep if you're not home. Here's the one big difference, though. Since we live in New England, we don't have a 12 month growing season like in CA. So though Boston Organics tries to source local farmers as much as possible, they will also bring in stuff from CA and certain farms in South America. I'm ok with that, though I do look foward to my boxes in spring and summer. The other thing I like about this services is that it forces me to be creative and try new foods and recipes. I don't know what I'm gonna get each time(though it's listed on the website), but when i do receive it, i can start looking for different recipes to try out. As soon as I get my delivery, I'll take picks and update you guys on how it all looks, but i'm excited to have something to look foward to!