EXCELLENT CREPES AT CAFE NATION

Last Friday, some girls and I decided to go out to dinner. Since Arti had just moved to the edge of Brookline, I thought it was finally time to venture further west. So I chose a cafe that I'd known about for a while, called Cafe Nation.Back when I was living and working in Beacon Hill, my friend Matt would occasionally bring me crepes from Cafe Nation. He visited the place several times a week and was a fan of their coffee. So I was already a fan of the Cafe Nation crepes before I had even visited. Unfortunately I also didn't acquire a car for another year, and I wasn't about to sit on the D line for an hour to visit a coffee shop, which is why I didn't make it there until nearly 2 years later. And of all funny coincidences, it turns out that Katie's friend owns the place. Boston really is a very small city. And so we set off, me, Katie, Arti and Jayna.

I was amazed at how close the cafe actually turned out to be. Having a car really is quite helpful. So now that I know where it is, I can go more often for the yummy crepes. The space is fairly large with lots of chairs so the local grad students can study and there's free wifi. Onto the food, I had a crepe with caramelized onions, cheese, spinach and i added in some turkey. Here it is. It was totally yummy and what I also really liked is that the use a whole wheat crepe, which you don't see very often.It turns out that they also have pressed sandwiches here, which is what Katie got. And here's some of the sweet potato soup (with something else, chicken i think?) that Katie's friend gave us. It tasted like a really good chili, as Katie pointed out. And they make it fresh every day.
Lastly, we had to have dessert crepes. I had my favorite crepe, which i used to order from a food truck back in college. It has nutella and strawberries, one of the world's greatest combos.
It got finished off very quickly.The other crepe we ordered had raspberries and lemon curd. So I didn't have any cause i'm not down with the raspberries, but the rest of the girls enjoyed it immensely.
All in all, we had a very pleasant meal it Cafe Nation. It's super cute and comfy. And reasonably priced. (Perhaps cause it is in Brighton Center). There were lots of different crepes I'd like to try out in the future, like the crab on that Arti had. I only wish there was a location closer to Boston.

POP QUIZ

Ok readers, look at this picture below and then answer the following question.The above picture is
A) A plastic toy shaped like a dog or
B) A very shiny chocolate shaped like a dog

And what did you all answer? The correct answer is B. Yes, that very shiny dog is made of chocolate. My mom sent it to me, and i'm surprised it arrived in tact, considering she used a tissue to protect it, which had fallen off during shipment. It looks like it's shellacked. So no, I'm not going to eat it. I just wanted to share it all with you. Now it will become a permanent part of my toy collection at the store, joining Chococat, Wally the Green Monster and the 2 M&M action figure that a customer gave me. (until it melt or breaks of course). Feel free to propose a name...

KATIE'S FAVORITE BROCCOLI SOUP

Well, it was Wednesday night, which you all must know by now, is the night for Project Runway. (ok, we watched Lost, I only watched 10 minutes of PR, but now we know, the finally three will be Santino, Chloe and Daniel V, or so i think). We made a group effort for dinner and made Katie's favorite broccoli soup.

So I cleaned the broccoli. the recipe only called for 1 cup, but we used extra, more like 3 cups.Dustin chopped the onionsand katie cooked everything. This is the broccoli cooking with some chicken broth and the onions. It cooked for 30 minutes until the broccoli had softened enough to puree.
next, Katie used the always helpful handblender and pureed the broccoli-chicken broth mixture.

Then, we set the soup on a low flame and added (in a slow stream) two egg yolks that had been beaten with 1+ cup of half and half. I streamed, katie stirred.And that was it. some salt and pepper and some crusty sourdough bread and we were all set! See how simple this recipe is? And very tasty too. The actual recipe suggested adding some jalapeno chilis and i thought that was a great idea. I could see how it'd work really well with the slight sweetness of the soup. And if i ever make this recipe myself, I'll try doing just that.

THE "ANTI SUPERBOWL" SUNDAY DINNER

To be honest, I'm not so much anti-superbowl as superbowl indifferent. So while many of my friends were off attending Superbowl parties, eating chicken wings and pizza, I was at home, cooking dinner for a small gathering of friend who were as superbowl indifferent as myself. And for the first time in a long time, I had a dinner party at my house where everyone could fit around the dining room table and be able to speak to each other. Which can be a nice change. Not that I don't love having you all over for dinner, but sometimes, a small dinner is also pleasant.

So what was on the menu for this dinner? I once again took inspiration from my Boston Organics order and used foodtv.com as my menu guide. I decided to make a celery soup, a fried polenta with spicy tomato sauce and chicken sausage, and an antipasto featuring sauteed red chard with garlic and oven roasted lemon cauliflower. Now, I know that many of you read the Amateur Gourmet, just like me. And I'll admit that I took some inspiration from his recent polenta post. And I used his Barefoot Contessa recipe. (cause i love Ina Garten). But I was also inspired by this lovely polenta I had in SF, which had the spicy tomato sauce and chicken sausage.

Moving on, the only thing i really documented was the making of the celery soup. I used a simple recipe off of foodtv.com, that oddly, had as much carrot in it as celery. Here it is below:

2 cups chopped celery, divided
2 cups chopped carrots, divided
4 tablespoons butter
2 cups onions, diced
3 tablespoons flour
6 cups hot vegetable broth, divided
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup heavy cream

And this time, I actually measured all the ingredients. First, the most timeconsuming part of this recipe is chopping all the veggies. After that, it's not so bad. So here are my bowls of chopped celery, carrot and onion.
So first, you use 1 cup of carrots, 1 cup of carrots and 1 cup of broth and put these in a small sauce pan. You cook the veggies until they're tender and put them aside.

In another pan, you sautee the onions with butter until they're clear. Ok, so this is the first part where i screwed up. I didn't read the recipe all the way through. So i actually started off making a roux, by melting the butter and then adding the flour. Then i added the chicken stock. And this is the point where i figured out I'd forgotten the onions.
So I put aside my chicken stock-roux mixture. And started over. I sauteed the onions in butter until they were clear and added in the flour. I allowed that to cook for 2 minutes. Then i dumped all this until the chicken broth and let the whole thing come to a boil, whisking frequently. I then added the rest of the celery and carrots and let the whole thing come to a boil, then reduced the heat and simmered for 30 minutes. I think the entire mixture turned out a bit thicker than it should've cause of the additional flour, but it wasn't too bad.After 30 minutes, i strained out the cooked veggies from the broth. Then i used a hand blender to blend the cooked veggies with 1 cup of broth. this is what it looked like. I was a little worried that my celery soup was turning out orange, rather than the green that i had imagined. But it was too late now.

I added the blended veggies with the rest of the cooked broth. Then, remember the veggies we cooked at the very beginning that were still in chunks? I added those in too. So the soup had some nice texture, too. And i added in a cup of half and half (rather than heavy cream, it keeps the soup a bit lighter). Now after all this work, i tasted the soup, and it was actually a little bland. (not surprising since there weren't any seasonings involved). So i sliced up a whole bunch of garlic and tossed it all in, and that helped a lot.Also surprising was the fact that the soup did have a lot of celery flavor to it. I was relieved that the flavor wasn't masked by all those carrots, and it ended up tasting pretty nice.

Now onto the rest of the meal. I didn't photograph most of it. It's something I forget once i start cooking. Suffice it to say that the Barefoot Contessa recipe for polenta was great. I'll definetly use it again. It had so much flavor and made the polenta, which can sometimes be quite bland, turn out super tasty. The only problem i had was at the end when fry the polenta. Make sure you use a nonstick pan. It turned out a bit ugly, but still yummy. Here's what it looked like when i fried up some leftovers the next day. The nonstick pan helped tremendously.

Also, the recipe i used to make the cauliflower turned out to be quite good. and of all amazing things, it came from Emeril. It was super easy too, so here's the recipe below.

5 to 6 cups cauliflower florets, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter (from 1 medium cauliflower)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon sliced garlic
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
Chopped chives, for garnishPreheat the oven to 500 degrees F.

Place the cauliflower florets in a large saute pan or a roasting pan. Drizzle the olive oil over the cauliflower, and season with the garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Place the saute/roasting pan in the oven and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure even roasting. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the Parmesan. Garnish with chopped chives and serve immediately while still warm.

I did make one modification, which was to add breadcrumbs with the Parm and mixed that in with everything else. I wanted the cauliflower to have a bit of crunch to it. Then I added extra Parm after it came out of the oven. So if you're ever sitting there on Superbowl Sunday, and you don't want to watch the game, I suggest trying out any of these recipes. They all turned out great.

DINNER AND PROJECT RUNWAY

Katie and I are big fans of Project Runway. Unfortunately, I don't have Bravo. So on Wednesday nights, I make my trek over to Katie's house to catch up on all the episodes I've missed and to hang out with cute kitties and eat dinner. This week, Katie and Dustin decided to make a noodle casserole. And even though I didn't do any of the cooking (though i did contribute a nice salad) , Katie wanted me to blog about it. (Personally, I think it's cause she's too lazy to document and write up the blog entry herself, since she is a guest blogger, but I will indulge her).

So when I arrived at the apartment, Katie had already finished browning the turkey meat. Here it is belowand Dustin was working on sweating the onions and mushrooms. While he was doing this, he was also cooking up the noodles.Meanwhile, I was on the couch watching past episodes of PR. (And running in the kitchen ever so often to take pics) Once the noodles had cooked, Katie put a can of tomoato soup and a can of tomato sauce into a large pot. and added the meat, veggies, some green pepper and the pasta. She mixed it all around and then added some parmesean cheese. Here's what it looks like when it all goes into the oven.Katie was a little unhappy that she didn't have enough cheese to sprinkle on top of the casserole, cause she likes the cheesy crust it forms. But I think it tasted fine. She baked the casserole for 45 minutes. And here's the finish product. I found it very tasty.And here's my contribution of salad. (which looked much better once it was out of the plastic bag.) I made the dressing myself, and it's super simple. plus people having been asking for the recipe, so here it is:
2 tablespoons of mustard
1 tablespoon of honey or maple syrup
6 tablespoons of olive oil
4 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
plus salt and pepper

I put it all in my mini food processor and hit blend. It takes like 5 minutes. And then you can adjust according to your own preference. And it's very tasty with almost no fat. And few things are more relaxing than sitting in front of the TV, eating dinner and yelling at the designers on Project Runway. Personally, I think the final 3 will be Chloe, Daniel V and Nick/Santino.