Friday, December 29, 2006

A Taste of Thai in T-Town

Bangkok Kitchen
582 Dussel Dr. Maumee, OH
419-897-7777


One of my favorite evenings in Toledo involves a large table at Bangkok Kitchen and an ecclectic group of people sharing dishes, passing hot tea and laughing together.

Our host is a glass artist and metalsmith with an international reputation both for her work and vivacious personality (www.labinostudio.com). Among her friends, she is known for being a great chef and an exceptional hostess. Thai night is always full of surprises...

Last night, she brought the "Stump" family. We toasted their reunion and the coming new year with a chilled bottle of blanc de blancs champagne. I was delighted to recognize one of the Stumps as my favorite, former yoga instructor. I was so sad when she and her family moved out of town. Her husband is an accomplished painter (www.jasonnikel.net) . Her brother, a talented chef based in Jackson Hole. I was in heaven. This is my idea of perfect dining companions. In one conversation I was learning about using coffee grounds as part of a seasoning rub for seared elk...in the next we were talking about the permanent collection at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY. I was totally blissed out!

The assorted dishes flew fast and furious around the table. Laab, drunken noodles, curries, spring rolls, more spicy cold salads, steamed fish, roasted duck and more. 15 people, at least a dozen dishes, and it ended up costing $14.00/person with tip. This is just another joy of Thai night.

Get a nice group of friends and head over to Bangkok Kitchen for sensory overload. If your only experience of Thai food is a plate of greasy, tasteless Pad Thai noodles - ask for help. The waitstaff knows the menu well and will be able to help you broaden your horizons with more interesting and authentically Thai flavors...thai basil, lemon grass, cilantro, red chili pepper, and curry.

“Glass City Gourmet” is a chronicle of one woman's attempt to cook, eat, diet and entertain with both flair and whimsy while based in Toledo, Ohio. I encourage you to read on as the "Glass City Gourmet" attempts grand recipes, samples locally owned restaurants, visits indigenous markets and humbly pursues her quest to be formally recognized as the official "Glass City Gourmet".

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Oo-La-La, Rugelach!






Happy Chanukah, Toledo!

In honor of the festival of lights and the annual cookie exchange with my book group, I decided to take on a few rugelach recipes. Rugelach literally means “little horn”. The first recipe, comes from Joan Nathan, the best of Jewish cookbook authors. The second comes from Martha Stewart, the woman who provides America with the best of everything.

Rugelach is not as easy to prepare as it is to pronounce. Yes, it rhymes with oo-la-la. The dough is a combination of 8 oz of cream cheese and two sticks of butter with a little bit of flour to hold it together. It is creamy, sinful, and delicious. If it is done right, it melts in your mouth. However, if you’ve ever worked with butter and cream cheese, or tried to make a homemade pie crust, you probably know the challenges associated with this type of dough. If not, suffice it to say that butter and cheese melt easily and render the combination a sticky goo.

After whipping up each of the doughs, I had to refrigerate them. Martha Stewart recommended waiting six hours for the dough to chill. Joan Nathan, clearly the superior chef in this instance, only has to wait an hour. While waiting, I decided to shave my Scharfen Berger chocolate for the chocolate rugelach. At the end of an hour I pulled out the dough and found that it was too warm and too gooey for me to handle. Joan Nathan has probably been making rugelach for 50 years and is willing to ice her hands to create perfect pastry. I am a complete novice and a bit of a wimp. I chose to give the dough 24 hours to chill thoroughly and begged my Mom to let me use her kitchen. She has top of the line appliances and yards of granite counter tops. I needed any advantage I could find for success with this project.

For those of you who are blessed to have granite countertops as a decorative touch to an unused kitchen, I urge you to try out a rugelach recipe or anything involving filo dough to see the benefits for which you paid dearly. Some luxuries are very practical.

Sunday afternoon, I went to my Mom’s kitchen to make the batches. I decided to use the Joan Nathan dough to make the traditional rugelach “little horn” shape. This was more challenging than I expected. While the dough was cool enough for me to handle it easily, rolling it into a perfect circle to cut identically sized wedges was a little more stressful. After the first two batches, I realized that my circles would never be symmetrical. The easiest solution was to cut the circle in half and then use a pizza wheel to cut each wedge with an even 1 ½ inch outer edge. Perfection. Once I made this adjustment, the batches turned out with identically sized cookies. Presentation still counts in the world of cookie baking.

The Martha Stewart recipe worked somewhat differently. I had to roll the pastry into 8” x 12” rectangles, add the filling, and then roll the pastry into a long roll for baking. This was a helluvalot easier than the “little horn” method. I ended up using her apricot jam, dried currant, walnut and cinnamin filling for three of the rolls. I had leftover chocolate from the Joan Nathan recipe and decided to try this shape with chocolate and pecans…just to see if I preferred one dough over the other.

In the end, the Martha Stewart rolls look fabulous…but the Joan Nathan dough tastes much better. For a novice, I would suggest using the Joan Nathan dough and the Martha Stewart fillings.

“Glass City Gourmet” is a chronicle of one woman's attempt to cook, eat, diet and entertain with both flair and whimsy while based in Toledo, Ohio. I encourage you to read on as the "Glass City Gourmet" attempts grand recipes, samples locally owned restaurants, visits indigenous markets and humbly pursues her quest to be formally recognized as the official "Glass City Gourmet".

Friday, December 08, 2006

Sushi in Suburbia


I'm not sure when, or even how, it happened but Sushi has taken a huge turn to the West and gone completely mainstream. In an effort to seduce the Midwestern palate, Japanese sushi chefs have developed a variety of maki rolls to suit even the most sushi-shy of Midwesterners. Cream cheese, artificial crab meat, and even "Tasuda Age" (fried chicken nuggets) are now part of this hybrid cuisine. "McMaki Rolls" must be in product development as I type this.

Restaurant Pacific
7629 Sylvania Avenue
Sylvania, Ohio 43560
419-841-8484

Upon entering Restaurant Pacific, it is clear that the restaurant is designed to appeal to the masses. It features bright yellow walls adorned with flat screen tvs that display looping videos of tropical fish swimming in their natural habitat. The videos are mesmerizing, and I couldn't help but stare at the walls while waiting for my dining companion.

In an effort to sample the menu, we ordered the "House Dinner for Two" ($29.95). This is described as "Our famous boat dinner for two, now served with chef special Sashimi, Sushi Roll, Vegetables Tempura, Lobster Tail, Teriyaki Steak, Seaweed Salad and daily side in boat style dish. In addtion, it also includes miso soup, house salad, Yakisoba and choice of ice cream."

The first dish is the Yakisoba. These are cold soba noodles in a peanut sauce. The sauce is rather salty and somewhat bland. We were both underwhelmed with the first course. The miso soup and house salad are standard Midwestern sushi house fare. I'll never really know how a bibb lettuce salad coated with an orange, ginger, and rice wine vinegar dressing made it to the Midwest sushi house menu, but it is wildly popular in this town. The miso soup is hot and predictably pleasant.

As soon as we finished the starters, the infamous boat dinner for two docked at our table. The boat is beautiful. Each piece is artfully arranged and the presentation is certainly Japanese. One of the unique features of the meal is a boiled lobster tail filled with teriyaki grilled chunks of lobster meat. While I found the meat to be a bit dry and chewy, my dining companion had no trouble finishing the remaining pieces. She was equally pleased with the assortment of tempura vegatables. I managed to find a couple of small pieces of sushi grade tuna in the tip of the boat and promptly devoured them.
Surely there is a place for a Japanese restaurant that serves Americanized dishes. Judging by the crowd that night, and the number of stir fry dishes on the menu, this is what Toledo wants.

If you are looking for "Sushi light" this is a lovely restaurant with a great mix of Americanized Japanese and Chinese dishes. It is probably a good place for family dining as well. The cooked dishes outnumber the sushi dishes about 8:1 so it may be a great place for someone who has never tried Japanese cuisine of any kind.

For now, I will continue my quest to find a sensuous plate of sashimi in Toledo, Ohio (hira giri, please). In the meantime, there's always NYC....
“Glass City Gourmet” is a chronicle of one woman's attempt to cook, eat, diet and entertain with both flair and whimsy while based in Toledo, Ohio. I encourage you to read on as the "Glass City Gourmet" attempts grand recipes, samples locally owned restaurants, visits indigenous markets and humbly pursues her quest to be formally recognized as the official "Glass City Gourmet".