LATIN FLAVOR IN ALLSTON

I was gonna start my post with a complaint that none of my friends seem to be blogging lately, so I have nothing to read during my long days at work, but I also haven't been blogging. So here's a post to encourage the rest of you to resume blogging. Please. I'm bored.

So last week Tom and I headed out to Allston to check out Sabor Latino. Tom had read some review about it in one of the free Boston weeklies (I don't remember if it was the dig or what) but we decided to check it out. We arrived there at about 4:30. I needed to have an earlier dinner since I was doing some work later that evening and not suprisingly, the place was empty at 4:30, so we got to sit wherever we wanted.

The room was quite large and Tom said the seats reminded him of the ones they have at Burger King (but not McDonald's, I don't remember why)
The waitress came over with menus and we took a quick look at it. I'd read that this place had pupusas, so I definitely wanted to try one and compare it with the one I'd had in JP. I also ordered a plate of nachos with chicken. Oh, also, the woman who took our orders seemed to speak no English at all. She seemed completely unfazed when I ordered in Spanish and just spoke to us in Spanish the whole time. I kinda liked that. At any rate, here are my nachos.

Next, I had a pupusa. I gotta say that the pupusa in JP was much better. This particular pupusa, stuffed with cheese and beans, didn't taste like corn at all. I liked the hot sauce it was served with, but it definitely wasn't that great.

It's a pretty big plate and they were actually quite tasty. But I was disappointed by the fact that they used store bought tortilla chips rather than fresh fried tortilla chips, which are really one of the easiest things in the world to make. I think the dish would've been greatly improved with the fresh chips, but these were good enough.
Tom also ordered two dishes. He had the chicken enchiladas. I thought these were pretty good. The green sauce on top is damn spicy, tho. And he got the fried tacos, which really, just looked like taquitos. I wish I could've had those cause I love taquitos, but they were stuffed with beef or pork (some meat I don't eat).
All in all, Tom and I agreed that we'd give this place a rating of 3 our of 5. I still like Tacos el Charro in JP better. This place had pretty decent food, and certainly not the worst Mexican food I'd ever experienced, but I don't think I'll be back when there are a number of other decent options closer to home. 

FALL APPLE PICKING AND APPLE PIE
Ahhh fall. My favorite season. The crisp air, the cooler temps, the changing leaves. And of course, the apple picking!!! It's my fourth fall in New England and I have yet to miss a year without apple picking. So Sunday was my day off and it was predicted to be a lovely one. (It turned out to be cloudier than expected, but it was still rather warm.) Normally I like heading to a different orchard each year. But this year I was being lazy and just wanted to go somewhere where I knew there were bathrooms and cider donuts. (yeah, seriously) So I we went to Honey Pot Hill out in Stow. I'd actually been here twice before. And on one of those trips, it was raining, so there weren't too many ppl. So I was pretty surprised when we pulled up and found the place was teaming with families and pickers. Basically, I have never picked with so many people and seen so few apples on the trees.

Little did we know that Sunday was the last picking day for Honey pot hill (which i found odd, since I've definitely picked later into the season, but maybe it was an early year or something). Anyway, the place was PACKED. There were 3 parking lots and in the one where we parked, there were a least 100 cars. As you can imagine, the orchards were also full of people, especially noisy children. We started off looking for Macs, and quickly found that most of the fruit was on the ground, or had been picked bare. Luckily, as we kept walking, we eventually found some trees with apples. We did have to climb ladders to get at them, but we filled half our bag and moved on to pick other varieties. (I was also unhappy to see a large snake, even if it was just a garter snake)

We moved on to pick some Spencer apples. And luckily, found much more of these. They were also much larger, so we got some good ones. I picked a man-apple for Leah, but forgot to give it to her later on. We filled our large bag pretty quickly and made our last stop at the store, where we picked up 2 dozen cider donuts (mostly for other ppl) and I got a quart of apple cider! (I love apple cider, I drink it throughout fall and winter). So even though there were so many ppl at Honeypot, I was still happy to go picking and enjoy some lovely changing foliage.

So after picking, you of course have to make an apple pie. In years past, I'd always make the crust myself, but I was being super lazy and just decided to buy a crust at the market. This would be a bad idea. My second bad idea was to follow an actual recipe. In the past, I've always eyeballed my pie filling. I don't know why I felt I needed a recipe this time, other than the fact that it'd been a while since I'd made a pie and I didn't want to screw it up.

Here are all the apples lined up on my kitchen counter (Tom washed them).And here's my pie. It looks pretty, but looks are quite deceptive...
First, the crust really lacked flavor. So even though it looked nice, it didn't taste wonderful. I've learned my lesson and will make my own crust next time. The second problem was the actual filling. First, the Spencer apples don't hold up well to cooking and ended up more like applesauce, so that was disappointing. The second problem was with the recipe itself. I used one from Cook's Illustrated and it called for far too much sugar. (I even felt this way as I was mixing it with the apples). This resulted in the sugar turning into a sugar syrup that soaked into the bottom crust and caused the crust to stick to the bottom of the pan. (It also leaked out of the sides of the pie and the pan ended up stick to the cookie sheet). At any rate, I'll be going back to my method of eyeballing next time.

The thing is, pie really isn't my thing. I'm really so much better at making tarte tatins, so I'll be doing that Saturday night, and am sure that will turn out much better. Stay tuned for that.

UBURGER, KENMORE SQUARE

Tom took a week off from work last week. Which left him some time to bring me lunch at work! We decided to try out the new burger joint in Kenmore Square, which has been open for just a week. I'd read some stuff about it on Chowhound and it seemed like a decent enough place. So Tom ordered me a chicken sandwich and onoin rings, while he got a Texas burger and fries.

Here's my sandwich.I was surprised to find it very tasty. The chicken breast was seasoned well and it wasn't overcooked at all, so it was quite moist. I also thoroughly enjoyed the grilled onions, since it adds a nice flavor and texture. Meanwhile, I was not as thrilled with my onion rings. First, I've never seen onion rings look like this before. I just didn't like the batter on them. I like them to be greasier. My second complaint about this place is that they're kinda cheapy on the ketchup. (Have you ever been to a McDonald's abroad when they ration the ketchup packets? They give you like one packet for a large order of fries and make you pay more for extra packets. Anyway, it was kinda like that) They only gave us 2 packets for our take out orders and Tom had to ask for an extra 2. It was not enough for 2 burgers with 2 sides. So remember to grab extra ketchup with your order. Tom was nice enough to trade his fries for my onion rings. (let's be honest, i would've eaten them anyway) The fries were very good. Apparently they're fresh cut. And they had a nice seasoning salt. Maybe not as great as the E.S. fries, but definitely a close second. And lastly, here's Tom's burger. Take note of the bacon and cheese. Tom also enjoyed his burger. It wasn't the greatest in the world, but as he pointed out, it's been a long time since Kenmore Square has had a burger joint like this, so this was very decent. I think I'll definitely be back to UBurger. It's not the cheapest or best burger in town, but it's better than McDonald's and certainly a welcome addition to Kenmore Square.

VIETNAMESE SANDWICHES AT NEW SAIGON

Ok, I'm kinda annoyed with Picasa right now. And I've been annoyed at blogger for a while. You see, when you use Picasa to upload your pictures, you can also select pictures and create a blogger entry from that page (Google owns Picasa and Blogger). So that's one way I've been doing my posts, cause it means that I don't have to upload each pic individually to Blogger. Except that I just did a post and Picasa ate it. Good thing it wasn't a long one. And lately, it's also been eating some of the pictures. So when the blog entry uploads to blogger, there are pics missing from the entry. I've just given up and I'm going back to the old, more time consuming method of uploading individual pictures. And since I'm ranting anyway, I'm greatly annoyed that Blogger isn't offering it's new beta version to people who already have blogger accounts. You can create a totally new blog in the new beta version, but you can't convert your current blog to the beta unless you've been invited. WTF. Does that make any sense? Anyway, Tom has the new version and I want it too. Damn you blogger.

Anyway, back to my post (which I've already typed once today). Last week, I was getting my haircut in Downtown Crossing, so after it got done, I met up with Tom for some lunch. I decided to get a Vietnamese sandwich in Chinatown, since I love these things. Now, I know that everyone has their own favorite Vietnamese sandwich place in Chinatown, and I like going to New Saigon, which is stuck right between Empress Garden and McDonald's on Washington St.
I like this place cause you can order a chicken teriyaki sandwich and they have yummy premade lunch boxes on sale. Here's a pic of all the sandwich fixings and the lunchboxes stacked in front. Tom ordered a mango shakes with bubbles. They used real mango to make it and he thought it was pretty good, but needed more ice. I, of course, got a chicken teriyaki sandwich. Here it is below.
There's just something so delicious about Vietnamese sandwiches. I think it has to do with all the different flavors and textures going on at once. You get the crunchy/salty/sourness of the pickled veggies, the sweetness of the chicken and the heat from the chilies. And it's all served on a lovely toasted chewy bun. Could anything be better? Maybe the fact that it costs only $2.50. Anyway, I wish there was someplace near home where I could get these all the time, but I guess I'll just have to settle for the occasional sandwich from New Saigon.

LATIN AMERICAN FOOD CRAWL IN JP

As you all know, I'm a frequent reader of Chowhound. Especially on days when I'm stuck at the store for hours on end and have nothing else to do. (Like today. Well really, I should be training my new employee, but she's called in sick. Always a bad sign, but not the first time it's happened. We'll see how it goes). At any rate, not so long ago I was surfing around looking for some good cheap eats in Boston and stumbled upon this posting of a JP Food Crawl. So I decided that I wanted to reproduce the crawl, with some minor modifications. (El Oriental de Cuba got firebombed a couple of years ago, and was just reopened recently, so we didn't go there. Plus it was a little farther away than any of the other places. And I got food poisoning the one time I did eat there).

So with addresses in my pocket and Leah and Jayna in tow, we went on our own JP Crawl. Luckily all the places we went are located on Centre St., within 3 blocks of each other. We started off at La Pupusa Guanaca, for an appetizer of pupusas. Now, all of the places we went would be correctly categorized as hole in the walls. Really simple places, plastic utensils, paper plates, you get the idea. But that means that it's cheap. And I like cheap. At La Pupusa Guanaca we each got a chicken pupusa (pictured below).
You'll notice that it was served with a side of hot sauce and some pickled veggies. These were actually pretty good. Warm and tasty. The hot sauce really wasn't that hot, tho. And according to the chowhound posts, the pickled veggies were supposed to be the best part, which I didn't really agree with. To me, they were crunchy, but kinda tasteless. Still, it was only $1.75 and much better than the ones I'd had at Orinoco and cost 4 times the price. (apparently they've raised their prices; I had seen posts stating that the price used to be $1.25 or $1.50). Jayna also got a cheese empanada, which I think she enjoyed, and a traditional drink of horchata.
We were still quite hungry, and so moved on to our second destination, Alex's Chimi. Now, this place was a bit bigger (more seating) than La Pupusa. When you enter, there's no menu or indication of how you should be ordering, so you basically follow everyone else and line up in front of the large hot table. Peering into the table, you could see roasted chicken stacked up on top, along with some fried pork ribs. The bottom layer was filled with different side dishes. Leah and I decided to split an order of chicken. (I had read that this place had good sandwiches, and tried to order one, but apparently, I was mistaken). With our order of half a chicken, we got a side of fried plantains and rice.
Jayna got basically the same thing, except she got patatas instead of rice. That's what we were told. Which translates to potatoes, but these things didn't look like potatoes to us. Oh well. The chicken was ok. The white meat I ate was pretty dry, but I enjoyed the well seasoned skin. Plus this entire thing costs us $8.

Our last stop was at Tacos el Charro. We were surprised to find the restaurant empty. But it was a cold fall evening. Leah accurately summed up the decor of the place by stating that it looked a lot like someone's basement rec room, but since it was empty, we had the whole place to ourselves. The waitress was super super nice to us. And quickly brought us a bag of chips and salsa. The salsa was clearly homemade, but it was still weak and watery. I did like the chips, though. They were great with a bit of salt. Since all of us were pretty full by this point, we ended up sharing an orders of tacos (3 per order. Jayna and I got chicken while Leah ordered beef) and an order of guacamole.I found the guacamole to be an odd bright green color. It almost didn't look like real avocadoes. And I also found the texture really strange. It was almost thick, like an order of white bean spread that'd been dyed green. Other than mashing the avocadoes, I'm not sure what else went into this guacamole. Needless, to see, I was not a big fan. But all was forgiven when our tacos arrived. Yes, I realize that this looks small and plain, but don't be fooled. This was one of the tastiest tacos I've ever had. The chicken was incredibly flavorful and juicy and I just loved it. Plus the corn tortilla was really soft and yummy. Dare I say it? I think this place had better tacos than El Pelon and Leah declared the tacos the winner of the night. I'll definitely be back for a full order all to myself. So I'm glad to have gone on this crawl, hung out with my friends and enjoyed some great Latin American food. Stay tuned for our next crawl!

NEW BOSTON FOOD BLOGS

What do i do when I'm bored out work (which is basically every single day of my life) ? I tend to surf the net. (doesn't everyone?) But today while looking for some dinner options, I stumbled upon 2 Boston food blogs that I really like. Normally, I read food blogs from NY, cause I haven't found any really good Boston ones. But after spending a bit of time reading Eat and Destroy I figured out that this guy has a lot of similar tastes to me. First, we seem to live in relatively the same area, cause he's gone to a lot of places that I've gone to or have wanted to go to. And second, he has very similar tastes as me. Look at his assessment of Taberna de Haro, Finale and Soulfire. I found myself nodding along and agreeing to a lot of what he said. So hopefully I'll be able to find so good food recommendations from this blog.

The other blog was linked to Eat and Destroy, so I surfed over to it and found Boston Chomps. Now I admit, that I haven't actually read any of the posts, but I did a quick looksee and this guy has some really nice pics. Plus his first review is of Muqueca in Inman Square, which is a place that I've wanted to try for some time now. So for all you Boston foodies out there, check these two blogs out and discover some new dining experiences in the city.

SOUP AND SANDWICH

It's officially fall. I say this because I actually wore my fall jacket and a scarf to work today. (Even though the calendar may say it's fall, I don't consider it truly fall if the temps are still abover 70F). So now that the nights are cooler and the days shorter, I start craving heavier foods. And foods that will warm my tummy. Plus I always gotta figure out things to do with Boston Organics order.

So last night I went home to cook dinner for Tom and made a Kale and White Bean Soup minus the white beans. I wanted to do something new with the kale I'd gotten, and when I was buying all the ingredients, I could've sworn that I had a can of white beans at home. But when I started looking for it, it had mysteriously disappeared. So I used the above recipe more as a guideline and threw in whatever else I had at home. I had also mis en placed everything the day before, so it was pretty easy to throw everything together. I started off by sauteeing garlic, onions and carrots together.
After about 5 minutes, a chucked in 3 cans of chicken broth along with a bay leaf and some rosemary (you can see those floating at the top.)Meanwhile, I chopped up the turkey sausage that I had purchased. I did consider pan frying these prior to adding them to the soup, but I was being lazy and I figured it wouldn't have made a difference. I'd be wrong about this.
After the broth came to a boil and the carrots had softened a bit, a threw in the kale. There was a lot of freaking kale and I didn't even end up using all of it. But the pot was getting full, so I had to stop and waited for the kale to cook down before I added the last of the ingredients.

After the kale cooked down a bit, I added the sausage and some mushrooms that I had left over from the curry I'd made earlier in the week. As you can see, the pot was overflowing. I never expected the sausage to expand like it did and they ended up being more like meatballs than sausages. So I've learned the lesson that next time I definitely need to sautee the sausage before adding it in. Tastewise, I liked the flavor of the soup, but it wasn't much different from the Portuguese Sausage soup that I've made before with kale. Really, the biggest difference was using a different type of sausage. Still, it was a good way to use up the kale and I look foward to nuking this as a snack over the next few days.

After having some soup, I went off to Leah's for my second dinner. We were watching Grey's Anatomy together(Tom stayed at home to watch his own show), and Leah made some really yummy panini sandwiches in her Foreman grill. She picked up a ton of ingredients from TJ's and started off by spreading pesto on some sourdough bread.You can see the other ingredients in the background. She layered on mozzarella, roasted peppers, arugula and chicken sausage and stuck the whole sandwich on the preheated Foreman grill. She had to hold down the lid so the sandwich would get flat and the center of the things would get cooked, which took a few minutes. After a while, the cheese started getting all melty, and it was ready!It was a great sandwich. Lots of flavors and really, who doesn't love melted cheese? I especially liked the sourdough, it's just one of my favorite breads. So thanks leah for a great dinner! (And we were happy that the episode of Grey's was much better than last week's episode. There's still hope for a great season!)

CURRY AND CHAWAN MUSHI

Ok, I give in, I'm doing a blog about curry. Mainly cause I want to avoid doing paperwork, am waiting on a couple of people to get back to me, and am sick of reading stuff online. Tom suggested that I do this post after we made a simple Japanese curry for dinner last week. You know, the ones where you just sautee the meat and veggies and chuck in some water and at the last minute, throw in those premade curry cubes? Yeah, it makes for a pretty tasty dinner (though we have a ton of leftovers still in the fridge. I need to start making a little headway).

I do admit that my favorite type of curry is the Japanese curry, since that's what I grew up with. My mom makes it and my grandma made it and so there's that nostaligia aspect playing into it. And I like how when you go to a Japanese curry house (not that we have any in Boston, but there are tons out in LA) they give you the little toppings. Like the pickles or raisins. And they have cool toppings. Like the chicken katsu curry. You get the idea. One of my favorite places in LA is Hurry Curry. They serve the curry on spaghetti, too.

The other thing I like about curry is how different countries have their own variations. It's true, I haven't had the Korean curry, but I am a big fan of Thai curry, with it's use of coconut milk. Sometimes I'll make it at home, but it's quite a production since it require more ingredients and lots more effort than the Japanese stuff. Plus there's that whole coconut milk thing. It's just not really healthy, so I consume it sparingly. And of course there are the myriad variations of Indian curry. I found this curry recipe recently in the NYTimes Magazine. It looks simple enough, and I've got all the ingredients at home, so maybe I'll invite you over and you can be my guinea pig.

Ok, and now for something completely unrelated to curry, the other night I had dinner at Ginza with family members. My aunt ordered way to much food, which was all ok. Ginza doesn't have the best Japanese food in Boston, but it's not the worst either. It was the first time I'd actually had dinner at Ginza (in the restaurant, we've ordered out before) and I was surprised to find some dishes that aren't normally served at Japanese restaurants. I ordered the chawan-mushi, which is basically a steamed egg custard with dashi and lots of ingredients thrown in. It's really delicate and flavorful and I was happy to find it. I ate almost 2 of them. The other thing I noticed (but didn't order) is this soup the they serve in a teapot. I normally have this at Japanese restaurants in Taiwan. My sisters and I refer to it as the teapot soup. But it's great and flavorful, so I'll have to check out the Ginza version the next time I'm there.

And that's it for today. If I remember I'll try to take some photos of the soup I'm making for dinner tonight.

FAIR FOOD AT THE TOPSFIELD FAIR

Ok, so if you read my entry about things that I wanted to do during the fall, you'll notice that one thing I wanted to do was visit the Topsfield Fair. I was excited to go see various animals (with the hope of holding a little chick or bunny in my hand) and Tom and I were both looking foward to eating some truly unhealthy fair food.

I haven't been to a fair in a long long time. The last time I went was probably 15 years ago. Apparently state fairs like this started as a way to promote agriculture and farming. (There was some article in the NYTimes a while ago describing the decline of state fairs cause such a small number of people are actually farmers). At any rate, the Topsfield Fair is more like an endless buffet of really really unhealthy food, with some small farm attractions and a number of rides thrown in. The reality is, people come here to eat, and I don't have a huge problem with that (it's only once a year after all.) It reminded me a lot of the Charlotte's Web movie where the rat is at the fair after it closes and does a whole song and dance about a smorgasbord.

So onto the food. We walked around a bit before deciding what to get. There were just a whole lot of options and I had a hard time figuring out what to start with. But Tom was very smart in spotting this sausage vendor and I was able to get a chicken sausage.
I've been lamenting the fact that they have stopped selling chicken sausages at Fenway Park this season. It was the one thing I'd always eat when I went to a game. But this chicken sausage was so much better It was juicy and very fresh (not some mass manufacture sausage). Plus, they were very generous with the onions and peppers. I enjoyed this a lot. If only they hadn't put fennel seeds in the sausage (I'm not a fan of fennel or anything licorice tasting). Ah well.

Tom started off his eating with a corn dog. He'd been looking foward to having one for a while. And I must admit, I was a bit envious. I love corn dogs, too! No worries, though. When I go home in December, I plan on having 2 corn dogs from Hot Dog on a Stick, where they make their corn dogs with turkey dogs!
So after the meat, I was ready for some fried foods. We started off with some German Fries (aka waffle fries). These were pretty good I found them kinda soggy and wished they were more crunchy. But still good.
We also walked around to check out the fair. My most favorite part was the newly hatched chicks. Unfortunately, they don't actually let you touch them. But they were soooo cute! Some of them were so new that they were still wet from coming out of the egg and were stumbling around with egg shell still attached to them cause they were so weak. I also enjoyed seeing the little piglets and the babe bunnies, which were less than 10 days old.

After a while, we were pretty tired, so it was back to the food. Tom got a chocolate chip cannoli (which I didn't photograph). It was grossly expensive though. Something like $6.25? I thought that was waaaayyyy too much, but oh well. Meanwhile, I was having a dilemma. I was pretty full, but how often do you get to go to a fair? I debated whether to get some dipped ice cream, but finally just settled on a lemonade.

The last thing we had was fried dough, spinkled with cinnamon and sugar. It was pretty good, albiet greasy. I was discussing this with Leah last night, and we both prefer funnel cakes to fried dough. Same concept, but with funnel cakes, you have the holes, which allows the battter to get crispier as it cooks. Actually, I think the fried dough is a New England thing, cause I've never seen it on the West Coast before. We just have funnel cakes.

By this point in the day, we were pretty much done. I think we both could've eaten more, but it's at the point where you know if you eat anything else, you'll regret it for the rest of the day. So we headed home, with our tummies full. I perfect outing for a lovely fall day.