Sips & Suppers 2015

Sips & Suppers is an annual fundraising event in Washington, DC held to raise money for DC Central Kitchen and Martha’s Table. Both organizations have missions to eliminate hunger and poverty in Washington, DC, especially for children and families.

We love this event where various generous folks open their homes to guests and to well-known chefs who come in from all over the country to cook the meals. This year, we attended a dinner prepared by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse (www.chezpanisse.com). Alice pioneered what is known now as California cuisine, with its emphasis on locally sourced ingredients. As you can imagine, the dinner was a delectable meal that filled the senses.

We started out with various hors d’oeuvres, including slices of bread toasted in the hosts’ fireplace and topped with cheese or a tapenade, raw oysters, and Jose Andres’s Iberico ham.

The first official course was a saffron chicken consommé with herbs. The consommé was incredibly flavorful and the herbs nicely balanced out the richness of the broth with their astringency.

Next up was a shellfish salad with black truffle, preserved lemon, and garden lettuces. The shellfish consisted of incredibly succulent lobster and scallops. Now, anything topped with black truffle is bound to be delicious, but the freshness of the seafood made the salad even more special.

The entrée was Jamison Farm rack of lamb served with Moroccan spices, couscous, and roasted heirloom carrots. Alice and her staff had converted the hosts’ garden plot into a firepit to roast the rack of lamb. As a result, the lamb had a smoky flavor and a crust that was unbelievable.

The palate cleanser was a citrus and date salad. The date was so fresh and ripe that it tasted like candy.

Dessert was sweet semolina crêpes with honey ice cream. Alice brought the honey from Berkeley, and it had an incredibly delicate floral flavor. Yum!

The guests were also incredibly star-studded, even for Washington, DC. We had prominent journalists, former and current senior government officials, and leaders of other communities, all of whom were delightful and informal. The normal guests were a lot of fun to talk to, too!  (At least, I hope we were.)  🙂

In addition to Alice, the other chefs were David Tanis, Ignacios Mattos, Nico Monday, and Amelia Monday.

You can find out more about DC Central Kitchen (www.dccentralkitchen.org) and Martha’s Table (www.marthastable.org) at their websites.

Book review: Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith

Eisenhower in War and PeaceEisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Achilles’ heel of biographers are those who fall in love with their subject and fail to be objective about the subject’s failings (an excellent example of this is David McCullough’s biography of John Adams).
In general, the author of this biography does his best to be as even-handed as he can, although a pro-Eisenhower bias is still evident. The book is a comprehensive look at Eisenhower’s life and at how surprisingly private and closed he was (the mischievous grin he flashed papered over many omissions, evidently). The author makes the point that Eisenhower’s main strength in his rise in the army was political, not strategic, but that this particular strength was exactly what was needed in the supreme commander of the Allied army. (As proof of his political skills, Eisenhower actually got along well with de Gaulle, amazingly enough.)
The author also doesn’t mince many words about Eisenhower’s wartime affair with Kay Summersby and minces even fewer words about why and how Eisenhower ended the relationship. That being said, there was remarkably little said about how Eisenhower’s family and Eisenhower himself whitewashed the episode and did their best to bury the evidence.
The most compelling chapters were the ones about Eisenhower’s rise in the Army and World War II. While the chapters on the Eisenhower Administration were also quite interesting (I especially enjoyed the chapter on the Suez Canal), the events are obviously less interesting. I also thought the author minimized Eisenhower’s mistakes in the Middle East to the point where you almost believed that the Iranian coup that put the Shah in power was exclusively the fault of Kermit Roosevelt and John Foster Dulles, despite the fact that Eisenhower signed off on it.
Overall, however, this was an excellent and comprehensive biography. If you know very little about Eisenhower, the breadth and depth of the book make it a good place to start. And if you know quite a bit about Eisenhower, the additional primary sources and the reasonably even-handed treatment of Eisenhower make this book a good additional resource.
I also happen to agree with the author’s ultimate conclusion. In the end, no one knew Ike very well, and that was exactly the way he wanted it.

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Book review: Monk’s Hood by Ellis Peters (Brother Cadfael #3)

Monk's Hood (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, #3)Monk’s Hood by Ellis Peters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This third installment in the Brother Cadfael mysteries lives up to its predecessors. A man is poisoned with one of Brother Cadfael’s concoctions, and his stepson is suspected of his death. Brother Cadfael is the only one who believes in the stepson’s innocence, and he unravels the truth about the murder step by step.
As with the first two mysteries, the period detail is well-researched and accurate, but so well integrated into the book that you do not ever get the sense that you’re reading a history book. The secondary characters are well-rounded and three dimensional. To my delight, one of my favorite characters, Hugh Berengar, who appears in the second mystery, makes an appearance in this book as well.
I’ve been so delighted with this series and am looking forward to reading Brother Cadfael #4!

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Restaurant review: China Chilcano

The latest restaurant in Jose Andres’s empire is China Chilcano (pronounced cheena, Spanish style). This restaurant has occasionally been described as a Peruvian-Asian fusion restaurant, but that is not quite accurate. Peru is home to large Chinese and Japanese immigrant communities, and there is a melding of food that is indigenous to Peru. That melding of flavors and cuisines is what China Chilcano is replicating. There are even names for this blending of cuisines. Chifa is what the Chinese-Peruvian blend of cuisines is called while the Japanese-Peruvian blending is called Nikkei.

The restaurant is fairly large and has three distinct styles to it. One wing is full of relatively large tables that can seat families or larger parties. It is a little more formal than the rest of the restaurant with glossy wooden tables and white chairs. The middle wing has mostly 2 and 4 top tables and has a less formal, more hip air. The hippest wing of the restaurant, not surprisingly, is nearest the bar. The entire restaurant gives off an energetic vibe that is hip enough for the twenty-somethings but not so hip that it scares off fuddy-duddies like us. It’s a clean and bright space that is informal enough to be able to bring kids but formal enough that you can bring a client.

Enough with the décor. To no one’s surprise, I’m sure, the food is the main attraction for us.

We started off with the equivalent of chips & salsa, which here is Chifles Chiferos con Salsa (fried plantain chips, fried lotus root chips, and sweet potato-rocoto sauce). The sauce was very good, not as smokily delicious as the salsa at Oyamel but well blended with a bit of a bite. The plantain chips worked better than the lotus root chips for collecting the sauce (the lotus root chips have too many holes in them), but both were delicious.

Next up was the Ceviche Clasico La Mar, which is red snapper, leche de tigre, sweet potato, red onion, cancha, and cilantro. It was an excellent melding of citrusy and fish flavors, and the fish was very fresh.

Ceviche Clasico La Mar

Ceviche Clasico La Mar

We ordered the China Chilcano version of the California roll, which uses potato instead of rice and contains jumbo lump crab, tobiko, spicy mayo, cucumber, avocado, and huancaina sauce. Jim really liked this, as he thought it was an excellent example of the melding of cuisines. I was less enthusiastic. I’m not a fan of mushy, and the potato casing caused the roll to have significantly less texture. (Mush. Ick.)

California roll, China Chilcano style

California roll, China Chilcano style

Moving towards a more Asian part of the menu, we had the Kam Lu Wantan (fried shrimp-pork dumplings accompanied by hoisin-tamarind sauce). I suspect the dumplings would taste better pan-fried than deep-fried, but the filling was flavorful and excellently done.

Kam Lu Wantan

Kam Lu Wantan

We loved the Sanguche de Chancho Nipon (pork belly in lotus steamed bun accompanied by pickled daikon, sweet potato, miso, aji limo, and hoisin sauce). We were a bit skeptical about how the pork belly and sweet potato combination would work, but this was perhaps the best dish in terms of full melding of flavors from both cuisines. The combination worked excellently, and we could have cheerfully eaten a plateful of these.

Sanguche de Chancho Nipon

Sanguche de Chancho Nipon

The HaKao are steamed glass dumplings filled with shrimp and pork, served with a soy sauce-rocoto combination. They were delicious but didn’t stand out the way the pork buns did.

HaKao

HaKao

My favorite dish (but not Jim’s) was the Tallarin Zhen Fe, which is a Hong Kong-style rice flour noodle, tomato stew, black garlic, egg, and five spice. For those familiar with Chinese cuisine, this is the Peruvian take on the Chinese dish of scrambled eggs with tomato. The noodles were very toothsome with a lot of texture, and the black garlic and five spice added a distinctive flavor. I loved it. Jim was less enamored.

Tallarin Zhen Fe

Tallarin Zhen Fe

On the other hand, he loved the Lomo Saltado (prime strip steak, tomato, soy sauce, shishito pepper, ginger, and shoestring potatoes served with rice). I liked it very much, but I didn’t think it was as creative a melding of flavors as the Tallarin.

Lomo Saltado

Lomo Saltado

Desserts are the weakest part of the menu. We tried a classic Peruvian dessert, the Suspiro Limena (sweetened condensed milk custard topped with both soft and crunch meringue and passion fruit). I thought it was way too sweet with not enough tart passion fruit to cut the sweetness.

Suspiro Limena

Suspiro Limena

We also tried the Ponderaciones de Kiwicha, a crispy fried spiral cookie served with chocolate cream, banana, and Algarrobina ice cream. The presentation was beautiful, but the cookie didn’t have much flavor and actually went better with the Suspiro than the sides it was served with (it cut into the sweetness of that dish).

Ponderaciones de Kiwicha

Ponderaciones de Kiwicha

Overall, we were very pleased with our meal. The combination of cuisines may not be as accessible to everyone as the Mexican restaurant in the empire (Oyamel) or the Mediterranean restaurant (Zaytinya) or the Spanish restaurant (Jaleo), but we thought everything was excellently prepared with fresh ingredients and an unusual combination of flavors. The wait staff is clearly new, so there are some rough spots, but they are eager to please and will catch on soon enough. We will definitely be back!

China Chilcano is located at 418 7th Street, NW in Washington, DC (for long-time DC residents, it’s the old Olsson’s Bookstore space in Penn Quarter).

 

Note: in the interests of full disclosure, we are investors in ThinkFood Group, the company behind Jose Andres’s restaurants.

Inn at Little Washington (December 2014)

Every year, Jim and I try and spend one night at the Inn at Little Washington sometime between Christmas and New Year as a way to relax and spend some time together. This year, we decided to bring the entire crew (the kids, our exchange student, and Jim’s mom) to spend the night there. (Gift certificates are wondrous things.)

We stayed at the Claiborne House (named after Craig Claiborne, an influential food reporter and chef). The Claiborne House is an extremely cute, over-the-top decorated two bedroom house, complete with its own well-equipped kitchen. (Although why anyone needs a kitchen when they’re staying at the Inn is beyond me.) As an example of the Inn’s attention to detail, we discovered that the cookie jar in the kitchen is stuffed with cookies made at the Inn. (And they are quite delicious!)

Naturally, we had a lovely dinner. The Inn has changed its format somewhat and now offers three different tasting menus, including an excellent vegetarian one. You can swap out items between tasting menus to suit your own tastes. The portions are small, to suit a tasting menu. Much as we don’t particularly like change, we like this change very much. It matches well to our inclination to taste as many different dishes as possible, you can customize the menu, and you don’t feel uncomfortably stuffed at the end of the meal. It’s perfect for us.

At almost every meal we have there, we start with some off-the-menu appetizers, and I never remember to record them. This time, I did!

To start out, there is a new bartender at the Inn who does an amazing job with non-alcoholic drinks. This is only one example of the many concoctions he came up with that evening. They are sophisticated and delicious and worth trying, especially if you are the designated driver. This is the one time you won’t be sorry to be limited to non-alcoholic drinks!

equally attractive non-alcoholic alternative

equally attractive non-alcoholic alternative

Truffle popcorn is one of my favorite dishes at the Inn. This is no ordinary popcorn. It’s been tossed with a variety of spices and a little butter. But the crowning glory is that as the popcorn is being served, a generous amount of black truffle is shaved on top of it. I could eat nothing but a giant bowl of truffle popcorn and still consider the meal to be one of my favorite meals at the Inn!

truffle popcorn

truffle popcorn

The tasting menu starts with a shot of soup. For some, it was a white bean truffle soup and for others, it was apple rutabaga soup. Both soups are served with a fried risotto ball on the side. My preference was the white bean truffle soup as the apple rutabaga soup was a bit sweet for me, but that was definitely not a unanimous opinion.

white bean truffle soup

white bean truffle soup

apple rutabaga soup

apple rutabaga soup

There are two raw fish dishes being served on the current menu. The first is a sashimi of Japanese yellowtail served with jalapeno peppers and dusted with espelette.

seared japanese yellowtail

sashimi of  japanese yellowtail

The second is ahi tuna tartare served with cucumber sorbet.

ahi tuna tartare

ahi tuna tartare

Both are spectacular, and the quality of the fish is superb.

Next up are Brussels sprouts served with honeycrisp apples, spiced pecans and Madeira-soaked raisins

Brussel sprouts

Brussel sprouts

Beet carpaccio accented with orange and vodka gelée

beet carpaccio

beet carpaccio

A marriage of hot and cold foie gras with sauternes gelée and blood orange marmalade

hot and cold foie gras

hot and cold foie gras

Off the vegetarian menu is a lemon pepper risotto

lemon pepper risotto

lemon pepper risotto

The best new item on the menu is a thinly shaved Australian wagyu beef “shabu-shabu.” The beef is beyond tender, and the shabu-shabu broth has a bite to it that is both unexpected and leaves you wanting more.

waygu beef shabu-shabu

wagyu beef shabu-shabu

This is a truffle-stuffed breast of pheasant on savoy cabbage and braised in champagne

breast of pheasant

breast of pheasant

The vegetarian equivalent is a winter turnip gratin with a quail egg and parmesan broth.

winter turnip gratin

winter turnip gratin

This is a sweet New England bay scallops dish served with candied yams and young coconut. A bit on the sweet side for me with the yams, but the scallops were delicate and wonderful.

bay scallops

bay scallops

The “meat” entrees included a pork chop with sauerkraut braised in Virginia Riesling, local apples and potato purée.

pork chop

pork chop

Duck breast served with foie gras and endive and wild rice.

duck breast

duck breast

And a cauliflower “steak” with yellow Indian curry, green grapes and candied walnuts.

cauliflower steak

cauliflower steak

As a palate cleanser, we were served a cranberry orange sorbet and hickory ice cream popsicle.

palate cleanser popsicle

palate cleanser popsicle

Desserts included a Granny Smith apple tart with buttermilk ice cream

apple tart with buttermilk ice cream

apple tart with buttermilk ice cream

A lemon meringue tartlet

lemon meringue tartlet

lemon meringue tartlet

And the painter’s palette of sorbets

painter's palette of sorbets

painter’s palette of sorbets

Even the lattes are beautiful…

latte

latte

A lovely way to celebrate the end of the year!

Book review: One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters

One Corpse Too Many (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, #2)One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am (belatedly) and slowly making my way through the Brother Cadfael mysteries (and wondering how I missed these for so many years). I really really liked this particular mystery. The book takes place in Shrewsbury as Stephen and Matilda continue their civil war for the right to rule England and Normandy. When Shrewsbury falls to Stephen, he executes the garrison. The Benedictine abbey (of which Brother Cadfael is a member) then buries the dead, only to find that there was an extra corpse that is unaccounted for.
In addition to the mystery, there is not one but two well-developed romances. The mystery is still central to the book, but the secondary characters are especially strong and appealing in this book. And Brother Cadfael is the serene and omniscient hub of all that goes on around him.
An excellent mystery written with well-researched historical detail. I highly recommend it!

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Christmas Dinner 2014

I often wonder whether our 13 year old son still believes in Santa Claus or not. It seems highly unlikely, especially given the precocious nature of his school. His sister is convinced it’s all a manipulative play, and she is probably correct. But it’s certainly fun to have a child who is still writing Santa a letter about what he wants for Christmas (a new bike this year), leaving a note for Santa with his chocolate chip cookies and milk and carrots for the reindeer, and waking up an hour before he’s allowed downstairs to see if Santa came. Manipulative it may be, but it’s a magnificent play.

After opening the plethora of gifts (and drones seemed to be the theme of gift-giving this year), we had extended family over and had an early Christmas dinner. (Said extended family has a 9 month old.) (As a further aside, our 16 year old daughter was TOTALLY grossed out by the 9 month old baby, who at this stage, is nothing but a glorified food processor who eats (messily), spits up (messily) and poops (messily and grossly)).

The Christmas dinner menu was as follows:

  • parsnip soup (served with gougeres)
  • 72 hour short ribs (which were actually 60 hour short ribs because we forgot to do them Monday night—oops)
  • brussel sprouts with bacon
  • mashed potatoes
  • bûche de noel
Christmas dinner 2014

Christmas dinner 2014

a "before" photo of the buche de Noel

a “before” photo of the buche de Noel

the final product

the final product

Afterwards, we all sat around in a food coma before going to bed. The very definition of a fabulous Christmas! Hope yours was Merry as well!