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.
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