Ramps! Love 'em or...

Be glad the friggin' season is over, like I am. About time. Wednesday, at the Union Square green market, I finally spotted the sign I've been waiting for all season...ramp season, that is. Yes kids, they're done. Through for the year. Gone. Kaputski. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. And so on. So here's what caused my brief happiness at all things seasonal...

Whew. Now, don't get me wrong, I love it when things (i.e. fruits and vegetables) come into season. There's certainly nothing wrong with a delicious, fresh from the garden tomato or a nice, ripe and juicy peach picked earlier that morning and not taken off a truck fresh from a week-long journey from California's Central Valley.

But hasn't the whole ramp-craze just gotten out of hand? I mean, the damn things are on every menu in town. From the farm-to-table places that we've all come to love (or else!), to places we hardly expect, chefs and home-cooks alike shove ramps down the throats of diners, whether you like them or not. I half expect to see them on tacos at some truck parked on lower Broadway, or being served with hand-pulled noodles on Eldridge Street.

Let's face it - taste wise, are ramps really all that different from tiny scallions? Or a mince of maybe garlic and scallions? Or shallots and garlic. Or onions that still have their greens attached? Those are all sure to be in the farmer's market in a month's time. I mean, I know they're cute and all, otherwise why would the food kids be doing stuff like this...

Yep, the ramp tattoo, and you have no idea what it took to get that chef to show me that ramp.

Anyway, ramp season isn't all that bad. Because, y'know, if it's ramp season then this isn't too far behind...

Oh, and bring on the scapes - I can hardly wait.

Weekend in DC

Now that we're settled into our DC apartment part of the time, it's fun to spend time down there on weekends every now and then. 'Stead of in the city - you know - New York City. Significant Eater and I always love weekends during the summer in the city - well, except for the parts that I can't stand, like the heat, humidity and smell. But it's a fact that when a lot of New Yorkers leave town for the weekend in the summer, if you avoid the tourist and other generally annoying areas, the city takes on a different feel - more relaxed, slower - a fun time to be together.

Why I explained that I don't know, but this past weekend was a DC one - and as far as our stomachs were concerned, we had some really great food, some mediocre food and cocktails, and some decent street food to go along with it all.

First lemme show you some gratuitous views from our roof-deck. SE gets caffeined up on the roof every morning. Here's the...well, if you don't know what this is, you might want to get that checked...

And here's the Washington National Cathedral...

with some big building in the foreground whose name escapes me.

Oh, we were taken to a secret spot by Miami Danny (now a Washingtonian, even though he still wears flip-flops, in a freakin' city)- well, secret that is, except for the busload of tourists that had pulled up. Here are MD, SE and guess who? I won't tell you who it is or where it is because I don't remember, but maybe you can look it up.

Bar Pilar was where SE and I started on Friday night - and is there really no host or hostess, as we were told? The second time I approached the server who had told me that, she basically ran away from me without saying anything. Ran. Ask SE. Nice.

Anyway, after about 15 minutes, using high-quality hovering skills honed over years in bars, we were able to snag two seats at the bar. Nice enough. Bar Pilar was once, I seem to recall, noted for it's cocktail program back when a certain bartender was behind the stick. No more, I guess. Asked for a Manhattan and an Aviation. Tender asked me what goes in an aviation? Switched to 2 Manhattans. Free-poured and shaken and too much rye (not necessarily a bad thing?). I guess the bar program has taken a plunge (or all the bartenders were in NYC at the MCC).

The food came soon enough. The roasted mushrooms were okay, frisee salad too (though the egg was overcooked). A lamb dog, a good idea in theory, was bland with zero snap, even after setting the superfluous giant hot dog bun aside. Mustard was great (wow), but who the hell serves minced raw shallots as an accompaniment to anything except maybe in a mignonette sauce or their mise en place?

Pork shoulder, served on grilled bread (?), was not good. The best dish of the night, and last to be served, was the fried chicken. Nicely crisp and somewhat juicy, served with a really good potato salad and a couple of pickle slices that were properly crunchy...and here's a tip: serve those sides with the pork, too. No need to return, I guess, but with the crowd they have, what do they care?

Walking around the neighborhood on Saturday afternoon, stumbled upon the Latino mercado which sets up in Adams Morgan on Columbia Road. I say stumbled though it has been there for years, according to M. Danny. Puerto Rico was in the house, as were Mexico and Argentina Avoid the commercial - style stuff; we had a good empanada, and great tacos from a mom and pop; lengua abounds.

That night - a return trip to Zaytinya. I had the pleasure of ordering for our group (my old friends trust me), and while I had somewhat mistakenly order a WHOLE LAMB SHOULDER for the 4 of us, there was more than one Significant Eater at the table, and we did good work. The lamb shoulder was amazing, black and crusty, fatty and juicy, salty and peppery - just perfect. I can't really compare Zaytinya having no in-depth knowledge of the DC restaurant scene, but it could easily become a favorite down there (Birch & Barley, though much different, has been good twice too).

The next day was reserved for one of my least favorite things to do....that is, after grocery shopping at Whole Foods on a Saturday, at prime time. Being out in a large crowd, with everyone lined up to get food. For tickets. But we ended up at a Taste of Arlington, a mass of humanity best left for those, shall we say, less cranky that I am. We did have a couple of nice bites, including some bratwurst and short ribs from this crew, but...

we missed this, being cooked by a couple of chefs from a Jaleo outpost...

Sadly for us, this paella was about an hour away from being anywhere near our stomachs. Never seeing a paella pan this huge in action, I took it as a sign...to teach myself how to make good paella - past attempts have been so-so, and I've bought a nice properly-sized paella pan and...I think I'll save that for a weekend in NYC. It'll give me something to blog about.

Attack of the Killer Strawberries

You know, as much as I respect and admire and have stuck up for Alice Waters, I'm not exactly what you'd call dogmatic when it comes to buying our edibles only from local "producers." After all, if you wanna use Spanish olive oil, or Greek feta cheese, or French mustard, or Italian prosciutto or any of a million other delicious products, you're basically throwing the whole locavore schtick under the bus, aren't you?

Oh sure, in season I go crazy...coming home from the farmer's market with more locally grown and produced stuff than 2 people could possibly eat (even if one of them is Significant Eater), before my next shopping binge. But there's also stuff we want to eat when it's not in season locally, and strawberries happen to be one of those things.

Trust me, I get strawberries locally when they're available at the farmer's market...tri-star berries are the berries which get everyone excited - and any menu worth it's fleur-de-sel will have a tri-star berry dessert on it come strawberry season in these parts. Creative chefs will probably even have some on their non-dessert menus, and I can hardly wait.

I can find some pretty tasty berries from my local guy-on-the-corner-with-fruit stand, when they first come in season and are shipped up from Florida. I don't know what variety they are, but they're usually very sweet, smell great and actually taste like strawberries. A few weeks later they're not as good, but still, we like strawberries and they make a decent sorbet (with a little kick from Framboise or Kirsch or something similar). Oh, and they're coming in from Mexico and California instead of Florida, and maybe that has something to do with it.

Just the other day, I happened to see that corner-guy had some nice looking California berries at his stand - they smelled good too, which sometimes can be an indicator of how they might taste...but not always. So I took some home and now I'm wondering what the hell they grow these things in - because I've never seen berries that look like this...

In this picture, they don't look so freakish - they look pretty good, as a matter of fact. But, they're huge - on the scale these two berries weigh almost 5 ounces! Take a look at them next to a good size clove of garlic...

That probably doesn't worry you so much...how's this, though, next to a medium size onion...

Or near a couple of fingerling potatoes...

Yes, they're bigger than the potatoes. They even dwarf the potatoes...but maybe that's because the potatoes are grown locally? (By the way, the potatoes were delicious cooked in duck fat, but that's another blog).

Anyway, don't you wonder what they're using in that soil out in California when you get a strawberry that big? Alice I'm sure does - oh, face it - I'm sure she'd never serve berries like those in her restaurants.

The upshot: they didn't taste half bad once you've trimmed away the core and all the other cottony weirdness that's inside. For the rest of the season, though, I think I'll wait for the tri-stars.