Posts Tagged “cheese”

What the Fluff? was postponed due to rain, so naturally we headed off to East Boston to a red sauce joint we’d never visited before, Rino’s place.  Wouldn’t you?  The party was joined by several members of the Josephine crew, Chef J (whose issues with red sauce are well documented), professor J and probably somebody I’m neglecting, for which I apologize.  If you don’t have a limeduck epithet, contact me right away to get one.

I’m not really sure how we selected Rino’s, but it certainly wasn’t the website, which claims, among other things, “RINO’S IS KNOWN FOR IT’S WONDERFUL RED SAUCE, THIN CUT OF VEAL AND FISTS SIZE RAVIOLIS MADE TO ORDER.” yowza.  They do a swift business in carryout as well as dine in.  We upped our party from six to seven at the last minute and had to wait in the rain another hour for it.

Foolishly, we ordered appetizers (and some underwhelming red wine), including a monstrous but super-fresh caprese salad and some delicious and tender baby octopus in a deep red sauce.  When ordering the apps, we were asked to confirm if we wanted app or entree size.  God help us if we had ordered entree size.  I needed a wide-angle adapter just to get the plate all in the frame.

For mains, just about everybody had pasta, most of it red, from the bolognese to the (pictured left) rabbit ragu with papardelle.  (That was me of course, since I’m on a rabbit and duck kick these days.  The rabbit was tender and complemented by some diced carrots, celery and onion for an autumnal feeling, and the papardelle were al dente.) Also exceptional were the fusili with chicken and broccoli and the eggplant wrapped around ricotta.  Brave C ordered the much-bragged-about fist-sized ravioli, pictured right.  I wish I had a ruler to add to the picture for scale.  Each one must have been more than a quarter pound.  Report is that they were delicious.

Only one of our party actually finished the main - clean plate clubber and gracious chauffeur M.  We left with six clamshell takeaway boxes, each filled with at least one more meal.  In retrospect, we have to question the economics of a restaurant that can serve up such enormous portions - including some with meats and seafood - for $16 or less, and have a wine list that tops out at $50 with most bottles at $18.  Go figure.  But as long as they do, and as long as you can find your way there (and back), I can think of few better places for giant plates of quality red sauce.

Right on the heels of the terrible cheese/chocolate choice, I find that somebody has made an important cheese choice for me. I went to Diesel Cafe for lunch as I often do and ordered the Branch Trio as I often do - in fact, it was the winner of the Davis Square cheese-off back in May - but found that they had dropped it from the menu as part of a general refresh done this month. The nice lady offered to cobble together a “Branch Duo” since they had only two kinds of cheese - cheddar and jack.

Only two kinds of cheese? There are a dozen sandwiches on the menu and only two kinds of cheese in the whole shop? This is starting to sound dangerously like that Monty Python sketch. To be fair, there is also fresh mozzarella and cream cheese, but those never really belonged on the Branch Trio.

Interestingly, the improvised Branch Duo, while lacking one cheese and some sprouts, featured toasted bread and for some reason cost $2 less than any of the official sandwiches on the menu.

I understand the need for a business to control food costs, and how this can lead to the elimination of a favorite item or ingredient.  (If you don’t, you might need to hire a restaurant consultant.) We’ve all seen sandwich prices rise on account of the price of tomatoes, for example. I guess this is how its going to be. Unless the next president can muster the guts to open the national cheese reserves, it might be a good idea to begin hoarding cheese and maybe also buying cheese futures as a hedge against future cheese inflation.

Earlier this week I was in Santa Monica engaging in the dark art of qualitative marketing research. (For more insight into marketing research, try Lynne’s shiny new blog, Marketing Analytics) While dining with my colleagues, I discovered that they had been having on ongoing discussion on foodie topics, and were eager to draw me into the symposium.

The questions came rapid-fire, each one positing gut-wrenching choices: “if you could have just one cheese for the rest of your life…” “what’s your favourite fruit?” “what’s the best seduction meal?” “what would be your last meal?” and so forth. I shot from the hip answering alternately thoughtfully and blithely, and then they unleashed the stumper - the question that was disturbing in its very implication.

Cheese or chocolate?

If starting right now - no last fling allowed - you had to give up one of those foods forever, which would it be? Each one has hundreds or even thousands of varieties and forms and applications. There’s chocolate in some of my favorite coffee drinks, and cheese in so many savory foods. For some, a dessert is incomplete without one or both. Chocolate cheesecake is off the table immediately. I waffled, I wavered, I changed the subject.

I told two friends about it recently, and they chose quickly but came down on opposite sides. One claimed a bit of lactose intolerance and the other pledged allegiance to the savory side of life. Others I’ve told, especially vegetarians, have been as worried by the question as I am.

I remember a few months back, twitter buddy @thespottedduck asked which four cheeses you would restrict yourself to for the rest of your life and had a hard time getting any takers to cut back to just four types, even with broad categories like “swiss” or “goat.” And similarly terrible to contemplate, a man in England raised over 1,000 pounds for charity by pledging to give up cheese for just one month. See the terrified reaction here by one bloke who has a list of top five european cheeses. He’s not cutting back to four anytime soon.

As a marketer, I’m all about forced ranking as a way to uncover preferences. As a businessman, I’m all about making tough choices to stay focused and productive. But as an eater, I’m just not sure I like thinking about this sort of thing.

It was Professor N’s birthday on the auspicious 8/8/08 but we were able to score a late reservation at Chez Panisse a the day before joined by his buddy P. We ventured out to Berkeley to Alice Waters shrine to gourmet locavoriousness. We were greeted by the trademark Victorian arts & crafts vaguely Frank Lloyd Wright decor of the place and briefly stored upstairs before being seated at our table for three. There was no room no way for a fourth.

Chez Panisse keeps it simple by offering a single four-course menu for $75 (plus 8.75% tax and 17% service for a total of about $95). Besides a wide selection of beverages, the only option was to add a cheese plate to the menu. We opted in. Even though there were no choices, the waiter glided over to review the menu with us, starting oddly with the main and working backward to the starters.

But the food is far from simple. We started off with an insalata caprese with heirloom tomatoes and hand-stretched mozzarella and basil with a bit of olive crostini. The pasta was summer squash tortelloni with garlic broth and squash blossoms on top. The salad was a great start with zesty tomatoes and supple fresh mozzarella. The tortelloni were pleasant enough but a little on the bland side.

The main was a perfect Wolfe Ranch quail with pepperonata, sweet corn, polenta and rocket. I dubbed it “quail with corn two ways” and enjoyed it thoroughly. It shouldn’t distract from the quail to say that the corn was absolutely fantastic, rivaling the corn I had earlier that day at The Slanted Door. It all went down very nicely with a glass of Grüner Veltliner, and apparently with N’s elderflower spritzer, made with the apparently de rigeur Nikolaihof biodynamic elderflower syrup.

We sprang for the cheese supplement and received a firm wedge of sheep cheese, a creamy disc of goat and a semisoft cow cheese with serious rind. The specifics were not recorded and there was barely time to photograph the cheeses before they disappeared. The dessert proper was a pluot crostata with wild fennel ice cream. I’m usually not a big fan of cooked fruit desserts, but this one might have been the best dish of the night: crisp crust with just enough flakiness, and tart fruit sour enough to keep me interested.

It was a celebratory banquet that lasted long enough for the clock to tick over to N’s official birthday. We had a grand time and enjoyed exemplary service, but we had to wonder if the food could have been a bit more adventurous or surprising to help justify the bill.

Not too long ago, I was craving a good savory scone, and when I couldn’t find any in local shops, a good friend went ahead and made some, which were most excellent. Yesterday, I was at the Wine & Cheese Cask, possibly Somerville’s best wine shop, looking for some crisp whites the fried chicken wine pairing. As it turns out, I purchased the winning wine at the cask. But before I did that, I went across the street to The Biscuit (formerly Toscanini, formerly Panini cafe) for a snack, and was pleasantly surprised to find that they had a savory scone, three cheese scallion to be precise.

It’s dangerous business to compare a purchased scone, even one from a neighborhood bakery, to one made pretty much on demand by a friend. But since some of you might not be lucky enough to have such a friend, I offer these observations on The Biscuit’s scone.

There’s lots of cheese.  This is a good thing.  You can even see some rivers of molten cheese oozing out of the scone on the right.  On the other hand, there’s no bacon.  A split decision, but vegetarians win.  Take note, A, J and L.

The shape of these scones is blobular, not the more traditional scone wedge.  No real opinion on that, but at $2 a pop, I’m happy to report that they are good-sized without being unpleasantly huge.

They are moist, perhaps moister than I’d expect from a scone.  Perhaps there’s extra egg in the mix, resulting in a shiny exterior and a generally brioche-y demeanor.  Not a bad thing at all, just not quite the same as other scones I’ve seen and sampled.

I’m happy there’s at least one more savory scone out there, and I recommend you check them out.