|
|
|
Archive: March, 2011
We here at Meal Ticket are extremely excited about this one: This summer, Steven Cook and Mike Solomonov (Zahav, Xochitl, Percy Street Barbecue), in partnership with Tom Henneman and Bobby Logue of MT fave Bodhi Coffee (401 S. Second St.) and our dear friend and CP/MT contributor Felicia D'Ambrosio, will open Federal Donuts at 1219 S. Second Street in South Philly. The mostly take-out operation wil specialize in donuts, Stumptown Coffee (the Bodhi boys will handle that) and — yes! — fried chicken, by the half of whole bird, courtesy of Solo. The shop will feature donut varieties ranging from key lime and vanilla cardamom custard to chocolate blood orange cream (!); they'll be sold individually and by the dozen. On the pollo tip: half chickens will run you $8 and whole birds $15, and they'll offer old-school classic crunchy chicken in addition to glazes like black garlic/date molasses and mango/pickle/passion fruit. This sounds like the joint! More for y'all soon.
Pazcki Day is today — Fat Tuesday — and I am feeling mad nostalgic. "Poonchkey" Day, where those of Polish descent feast on traditional deep-fried doughnuts before the Lenten season, is a huge deal in my home of Metro Detroit, especially when pops is running a bakery in an area heavily populated by Polish descendants. Sadly, this highly caloric holiday doesn't have the same ubiquity in Philly (though the strong PA Dutch tradition here does mean there are plenty of fastnachts). I miss the boxes of paczkis my dad used to bring home from work: a half-dozen fist-sized doughnut, covered in a crusty glaze and pumped full of fruity goo (shout-out to raspberry) or pale-yellow custard. Where exactly can I get these jawns in Philly? And for those of you who are in the know, who has the best and what's YOUR favorite? Fill me in!
View galleryNOTE: This post was originally published on Friday, March 4, at 3:03 p.m., but was written too late to make the official transition to CP's new site, which went live this past weekend.
By this time of the year, no matter how much you lovelovelove apples, chances are you’re sick of them and have a stash rotting away in the bottom of your crisper drawer. If you leave it closed, perhaps they’ll just go away. But I say no! Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of Galas, Grannies and Goldens. It’s time to make applesauce.
Applesauce is an easy way to use up bruised, busted or otherwise unappealing apples. With a little bit of prep, it practically makes itself. I use the illustrious Ina Garten’s base recipe of peeled apples (plus a few skins for color), butter and brown sugar, then add in whatever citrus and spices I have on hand. I deployed a dozen or so ugly Fujis to today’s batch, flavoring it with the zests and juices of a Minneola, a blood orange, a Meyer lemon (plus the zest of a kaffir lime; juice is bitter) and cinnamon, allspice, clove, vanilla bean and lavender. If you can get your hands on lard or bacon fat, a spoonful stirred in after the applesauce has cooked is ridiculous. Full recipe follows.
Homestyle Applesauce
Go Get This:
3 lbs. any apples
1 Minneola, juice and zest
1 blood orange, juice and zest
1 Meyer lemon, juice and zest
1 kaffir lime, zest only
1 tsp. clove, toasted and ground
1 tsp. allspice, toasted and ground
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. dried lavender
Half 1 vanilla bean, scraped, plus pod
Half-cup brown sugar
4 tbsp. butter
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tsp. lard
Now Do This:
Preheat the oven to 350.
To a big mixing bowl, add the citrus juices and zests and whisk to combine.
Peel, core and quarter the apples, reserving the peels of two red apples, which will give the applesauce color (Thanks Ina!). Add the sliced apples to the citrus and toss to coat to keep them from oxidizing. Add the cloves, allspice, cinnamon, lavender, brown sugar, cracked black pepper, salt and vanilla beans and scraped pod. Toss to distribute evenly and transfer to a deep-bottomed ovenproof pot. Add the butter, cover and bake for 1.5 hours* until apples are soft.
Remove from oven, cool slightly and stir in lard. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Serve when cooled to room temperature or pack up and store in the fridge up to two weeks.
*After 1.5 hours, I still had a lot of liquid left over in this batch, so I put the pot on the stove and reduced the liquid by half.
NOTE: This post was originally published on Friday, March 4, at 12:03 p.m., but was written too late to make the official transition to CP's new site, which went live this past weekend.
On Tuesday we had some veryveryvery preliminary details on Hop Sing Laundromat, a cocktail bar operation coming to 1029 Race Street. Now we’ve got a bit more for y’all. The building you see above, a long-dormant restaurant space, has undergone a full demolition, down to new concrete pours, to make room for this project. (The name is a reference to Bonanza — Hop Sing, the Cartwright clan’s cook, constantly threatened to abandon his post to run a Laundromat in Virginia City.) The main entrance to the bar will be up the stairs in the bottom pic — that doorway will lead to a shoeshine stand, where folks will be able to get their kicks polished up gratis daily from 5 to 8 p.m. It’s through here drinkers will enter the main floor, the focal point of which will be a 40-foot-long, 14-foot-high bar that’ll apparently have the capacity to hold 1,000-some-odd bottles.
Though there is still the bones of a kitchen in the space, no food will be cooked on the premises; management plans on partnering with five Chinatown restaurants to offer quick delivery of each spot’s five best dishes for Hop Sing customers. It’s said that the opening drink list will be large; ownership has a system in place to distribute cards good for two complimentary cocktails to guests in the bar’s first few weeks of operation. Those early adopters will be able to vote for which drinks work and which drinks don’t, a bit of crowd-sourcing to strengthen and tighten the menu.
Finally, the timeline: Construction is expected to be completed by the end of March, leading into several weeks of staff training, so we’re likely looking at an April debut.
And now, a rare instance of Philly food meets exhibition sports news: Tomorrow at 11 a.m., two exquisitely nicknamed Harlem Globetrotters — Big Easy Lofton and Buckets Blakes — will be taking their to the streets to debut a brand-new 4-point shot as part of their "4 Times The Fun" Tour at — you guessed it — Famous 4th Street Deli (700 S. Fourth St.). As usual, they’re doin' it for the kids and bringing students from the nearby St. Peter’s School to cheer them on as they sink shots from 35 feet out (that's 12 feet beyond the NBA's 3-point line). So follow the whistled tune of "Sweet Georgia Brown" to Fourth and Bainbridge for a giant pastrami on rye and a big taste of Globetrotter glory.
Mardi Gras starts tomorrow, and if you can't be in NOLA, you might as well head over the Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co. (112 S. 18th St.). As part of their "Extra Credit" series (which offers a monthly-rotating set of specials between 5 and 8 pm), they'll be doling out complimentary N'awlins hors d'oeurves alongside a new menu of Mardi Gras-themed cocktails. The three highlighted "Extra Credit" drinks are the Roffignac, Vieux Carre and Sazerac. If you can't physically be where the action is, you might as well drink like you are.
Meal Ticket's hearing that Michael Santoro, a well-traveled chef who was last the chef de cuisine of D.C.'s Blue Duck Tavern, will be running the show at Aimee Olexy's as-yet-unnamed restaurant at 201 W. Washington Square. An Ohio native, Santoro's put in work at U.K. culinary temples like St. John's and Fat Duck, and thrived on the NYC circuit too, working as a sous chef at Gilt and chef de cuisine at Boqueria. Details are still a bit scarce on Olexy's team-up with Stephen Starr, but it's looking like the space — which is being conceived inside and out by Jersey's Groundswell Design Group — should open in roughly a month's time. More soon.
Mica (8609 Germantown Ave.), the Chestnut Hill restaurant from chefs Chip Roman and Jason Cichonski that we mentioned in January and February, should be ready to go by Friday, March 18. Updates and a few food pics can be had on the restaurant’s Facebook page. More for ya soon.
 |
| Photo | Erin Finnerty |
Once a week, Team Meal Ticket shares its latest sugar-laden fixations. Do not tell 0ur dentist.
IN QUESTION: I love Easter for all of its pastel-hued pleasantries and for the nostalgic value — my mom is the best Easter Bunny ever — and it's an excellent time of year to be in a candy aisle. This week, we have a new spin on an Easter classic: Just Born's new Chocolate-Covered Peeps! I immediately decapitated (how macabre) the milk chocolate-covered classic-yellow peep and was a little disappointed. The Peep formula appears to have been altered: These peeps are 2D, lay on their back rather than on their bottoms, and they aren't crusted in sugar dust either, so it lacks that little crunch and strange aftertaste. BOO. These taste like any old marshmallow covered in just-OK chocolate. They lack true Peepiness.
WHERE TO BUY: I've spotted these at a few major retailers around town. These individual packs were found at Rite Aid at 17th and Chestnut (they should sponsor this column already).
HOW MANY DO WE USUALLY EAT IN ONE SITTING: I think I've met my match ... I could not finish ONE. They're not terrible, but I just am not feeling it. One individually wrapped Peep is plenty, but you can cop a pack of six that would fit snugly in a big ol' Easter basket.
FINER POINTS: I used to go bananas microwaving Peeps. If nuked for 20 seconds they quadruple in size and are perfect for whipping up some ghetto flameless s'mores if you have the other necessary elements on hand. I don't think the chocolate-covered version would yield the same results, though. The Just Born factory is located a few hours north in Bethlehem, making these almost local. Big ups to regional candy!
When I first reported that Four Corners Managment's Avram Hornik and Mark Fichera (Drinkers, Lucy's) had leapt into bed with R5's Sean Agnew to purchase 10th and Spring Garden's Spaghetti Warehouse, no body figured they'd just make food and sell liquor as the license they were after allowed them such. They were going to — supposedly — open a concert hall called Union Transfer with help from New York booking boys Bowery Presents. September 2011 has been the tentative go-to date. While we haven t heard from Hornik or Fichera, Agnew and I have kept a steady if still secret communiqué going in relationship to said pasta ballroom blitz.
Since the space closed before Christmas, Agnew has been traveling through the Kongs. Currently he is in Hanoi (DJing in a bar during this chat), heading onto India and then? “Heading home for a long time,” writes Agnew.
There are a lot of rumors that he wouldn’t answer for or fess up to — like how much of an owner (if any) he’d be in the venture, what possible food could be involved, what the hell is Bowery Presents doing there, were capacities planned or openings set? He wouldn’t confirm or deny a thing. Agnew gave me a lot of stuff off-the-record and it makes sense that everyone involved is cautious. “I am in talks right now to help run and book shows in this possible new venue. If all goes well it should be really cool.” OK, sounds tentative. But. For those saddened or pleased that Hornik’s Jumbo Theater attempts in Northern Port Fishington died, you had to admit: It never got a chance to breathe. What Agnew did offer as a solid should be a big relief to R5 indie heads who adore the DIY booker. “When and if it happens, it will not be the end of R5,” he says. “We will still continue to exist and book shows in other rooms.” Solid, that. Meal Ticket will have more news when Agnew gets to India.
- barstool scientist
- Booze
- Brew Revue
- Chef Salad
- Closings
- Coffee
- Contests
- Dealage
- Dirty Dishes
- Don't Front
- Eat This Immediately
- Field Trip
- Food and Art
- Food and Holidays
- Food and Movies
- Food and Music
- Food and Politics
- Food and Sports
- Food and Web
- Food Blogs
- Food Books
- Food Events
- Food News
- Food TV
- Gifted
- Happy Hour Hopper
- How-To
- In Print
- Interview
- Meal Ticket
- Menu Time
- Not So Quickfire
- Notes from the Weekend
- On Wheels
- Openings
- Patio Drinking
- Philly Beer Week 2010
- Photos
- Private Chef POV
- Product Placement
- Recipes
- Snack Time
- Stiff Drank
- SUPPER
- Tea
- Testing
- Ticket Stubs
- Top Chef
- Vegan
- Vegetarian
- Video
- Weekly Candy
- Weird Regional Foods
- We're Here to Help
- Where'd We Eat?
- Drew Lazor's Ill-Advised Rant Factory
- Pregame
- Ill-Advised Ranting
- The Week Without Meat
- Philly Beer Week 2009
- Real Big
- Where'd I Eat Last Night?
- Top Chef Masters
- The Good Word
- Next Iron Chef
- Arterial Terrorism
- Food and Radio
