Sibling Rivalry

Last Friday night, Jason and I went to Sibling Rivalry for Restaurant Week. It should be duly noted that usually, I hate Restaurant Week - it's an excuse for good restaurants to turn a quick buck and put things like chicken Caesar salad on the prix fixe menu. I also think you never get the full effect of what eating that restaurant usually is because there are mobs of people, service is sloppy, you don't get to taste the chef's trademark style, and I come out feeling cheated and unsettled. But I suppose, overall, it's a win-win situation for everyone - diners get the fancy dining experience at a fraction of the price and restaurants get inflated sales for a week. We went to Sibling Rivalry fully expecting to order off the regular menu and not the prix fixe, Restaurant Week being the push I needed to finally make a reservation. Imagine my delight when we opened the menu to realize that the entire Sibling Rivalry menu was fair game. That's $33.09 for any appetizer, entree and dessert from here.

The concept of Sibling Rivalry is that it has two executive chefs: two brothers David and Bob Kinkead. From the restaurant's website, "Chefs David and Bob Kinkead created a 'dueling' menu that showcases their talents with different interpretations of seasonal ingredients." We ordered mostly from Chef David's side of the menu, although when I read up on both chefs it seems like Chef Bob is the more critically acclaimed chef.

This was the first appetizer, a Morroccan lamb brik with cumin, curried lamb jus and a pickled cucumber and lamb salad. Also, on the plate, a bit random, was some orange sections. Brik is a North African type of fried or baked pastry around some type of filling, usually made with phyllo dough. The lamb filling in this was really, really delicious - savory and spicy, with some raisins thrown in for sweetness. I found the cucumber salad and the orange slices unnecessary garnishes, and would have been satisfied with the lamb brik alone. My only complaint was that dish came out not as hot as it should have been. This would have been delicious if it was piping and had come straight from the fryer.

Ancho Chili steak tartare, with tomatillo salsa, pickled cabbage, a cheese pupusa and avocado and cilantro. The tartare on its own was good but the whole thing really came together when you combined a bite of the cheese pupasa and the tomatillo salsa with the tartare. I liked the dish a lot because I thought putting a Mexican twist to steak tartare was very creative. The cheese pupusa was my favorite part of the whole thing; it's made with masa de maíz, the corn flour usually used to make tortillas and stuffed with cheese but I couldn't figure out what kind of cheese it was.

Seared duck breast, over celery root puree, roasted vegetables and brussel sprouts. The duck was slightly overdone, even after I had asked for it to "err on the side of medium rare" but what I liked the most about this was the celery root puree. This was actually the first time that I had celery root and I loved it! I like the very aromatic and distinct flavor of celery, and it seems intensified in celery root, but also there's a really comforting texture about celery root puree, like mashed potatoes.

Seared jumbo Cape scallops, with Anaheim chile relleno, tomatillo relish, and salsa fresca. This was perhaps an ordering mistake on our part but the flavors of this dish were remarkably similar to the steak tartare. What was weird was that these two dishes were offered by a different Kinkead. Still, despite the repeat in flavor, I really like the scallops, which were cooked to perfection and the chile relleno. They coated the Anaheim chile with panko crumbs which gave it a great texture.

Caramel chocolate mousse cake with caramel crème anglaise and white chocolate mousse. This was by far the worst thing we had all night, trite in concept and strange tasting. I think they put star anise in it, which gave it this really bad aftertaste.

Bread pudding with vanilla ice cream and some kind of berry reduction underneath. This was better than the chocolate mousse but same deal - a chef's dessert, an easy play. Ho-hum.

Overall, I think Sibling Rivalry was good but nothing remarkable compared to other New American restaurants in its price range. I think our experience was also downgraded by the fact that it was Restaurant Week: the whole place was so loud we could barely hear each other, it took a long time for our food to arrive and everyone seemed harried and rushed. I think (hope) that dishes would have come out hot instead of lukewarm had the place not been a madhouse. Service was friendly but also a little overeager - our waiter proclaimed himself a "total foodie" but a quick check on Wikipedia showed he was wrong on a few accounts. I didn't find this as much of an issue as the fact that at some point he propped down and sat next to me in the booth during dinner.

Forays into baking

The world is divided into cooks and bakers and the rare few who can do both. My friend Christine can but I fall primarily into the first category, with an irrational fear of the second. I think it first grew when I took Home Ec in eighth grade with Mrs. Petrowski, who always smelled like talc powder. The only things I remember from the cooking portion of that class is that she taught us to always soak our dishes in hot, soapy water ("it does the work for you!") and that we had to make blueberry muffins. I can't remember if the recipe was anything special, or if we used real blueberries or anything else specific but I do remember that we were put in groups, there was a boy named Anthony Romano in my group and we managed to turn out these god-awful muffins - soggy and uncooked, and somehow, green. Don't ask me how, but when Mrs. Petrowski saw these she threated to fail us for the day and since then, I've been afraid to bake. I'm not very comfortable with specific measurements and I hate cooking from recipes, and I find that baking, unless you do it frequently, requires both those things.

I'm trying to get better with baking, if anything because if I find myself on Top Chef one day, I want to be ready for the dessert challenge. I think part of baking is that it seems like an event, so doing it requires an attitude of "I will conquer this". On Thanksgiving, I made my first pie crust from scratch and felt pretty proud about that, even more so because of the lattice top.

Last week, I was feeling courageous so I decided to try something a little more complicated with greater room for failure - cream puffs with a chocolate sauce. I found the recipe in How To Cook Everything and was particularly intrigued by the dough. It requires making a pâte à choux, whose literal translation is "cabbage paste" for the way it should look. It is the dough used in making cream puffs, eclairs, profiteroles, beignets, and what I am most excited to make, gougères, or cheese puffs. The really cool thing about choux pastry is that when baked, it rises to about three times its original size because the air in the batter steams and expands the dough. As a result, you're left with a hole in the middle of your pastry that is perfect for filling.

I also made a vanilla custard to fill my pastries with and made a scrumptious chocolate sauce to drizzle on top by melting dark chocolate in heavy cream.

The results of the baking:
It turns out you can only eat so many of these before you feel like you might die, the chief ingredients being butter, heavy cream and sugar but I brought them into the office and they were a hit.

A trip to Russo's

I often complain about Boston not being a "food city" and nowhere is this more apparent than when I try to go grocery shopping. The supermarket landscape is dominated by three major players: the first is Trader Joe's, which I think is incredible for snacks and quick, gourmet frozen meals in a fix but the produce is never very good and I hate buying it in those weird plastic wrapped packages; the second is large, conventional supermarkets like Shaw's and Stop n' Shop (see syn. Safeway, Albertson's, Vons, etc.), and the third is Whole Foods, which I like but still not the kind of specialty grocery store like D'agostino's or Citarella that get me really excited. Checking listings for the two local farmers' markets yielded really disappointing results - The Copley Farmers' Market doesn't start until May 20 and the Coolidge Corner one doesn't start until July!

I went to Russo's yesterday, which describes itself as "the food lover's food store" and was blown away because this was exactly the type of grocery store that we are lacking in Boston. I think a lot of the food is seasonal and as locally grown as possible and there is also much more variety in their produce. We walked away with a lot of somewhat interesting vegetables and fruits like lemon plums, which I think is a type of plucot, and a red pomelo, with promises to live more dangerously next week.

What I especially couldn't resist is Russo's amazing prepared foods section, as well as their meats and charcuterie. When I saw the really fantastic looking prosciutto di parma, I knew that I had to do an antipasti platter.

Here are the fruits of our (not really) labor.

We got the prosciutto di parma that inspired it all, spicy soppressata, and dry Italian salami and grilled asparagus, eggplant, peppers, onions, and zucchini. Also, Tom Thumb tomatoes sprinkled with fleur de sel and cracked black pepper, some dried figs, mixed marinated olives and Sicilian green olives stuffed with bleu cheese, roasted tomatoes and the best Gouda I have ever had (it's a two year old Dutch Gouda).

I made a chickory and frisee salad with a lemon-shallot vinagrette and with shaved Parmigiano and a fried egg on top and had a bottle of Pinot Black, a 2007 pinot noir from Chile, my new favorite red wine.

Bring me back to the days of Taco Nazo

Before I went to college in California, I really didn't like Mexican food and mostly associated with the likes of Taco Bell and Jose Tejas, which I have eaten at only once. We passed by it every time we drove to my grandma's house near Princeton and there was a giant neon EAT sign hanging over it, that could be seen down the highway for a good five miles. One day, my mother's curiosity got the best of her and we pulled in for lunch. The meal consisted of standard East Coast Mexican food - subpar, and in large quantities. My most memorable moment from that meal is the waitress offering to bring my mother another 32oz. coke, even though she had barely finished her first and then we went running out, my mother shocked that people could consume that much cheese and sauce and crap in one sitting.

This all changed when I went to school in southern California, not so much the quantity of food but the quality of it. I was first introduced to it at Pomona's dining hall, where every Wednesday was Taco Day. I still maintain the best corn tortillas I've ever had, including those had in Mexico. It helped that a large majority of our dining hall staff was Mexican and were making the foodstuffs of their homeland, including those incredible corn tortillas which were handmade and grilled to perfection. This expanded to Mexican cuisine outside of our tiny Pomona bubble - we explored local Mexican joints, including a tiny taqueria called El Rey in Chino (fictional home of Ryan on the OC!) where I consumed tripe, carnitas, tortas, and tried eye-tearing after eye tearing salsas from the salsa bar, some so fiery red it almost hurt to look at.

The other great culinary discovery I made while I was at college was fish tacos, from Taco Nazo. Yes, they're a chain, but I had never been exposed to fish tacos before and the fast food in California (where everything is a drive through) is very good (see In n' Out). These fish tacos were incredible; flaky, white fish (What kind?Who knows? Probably tilapia) battered and fried so there was a crispy, hot shell on the outside, shredded cabbage, and a little tartar sauce probably thinned out with some yogurt or milk. I'd pile this with salsa and hot sauce and radishes and pickled onions from the salsa bar, squeeze a lime over my overfilled taco and eat to my heart's content. Especially on Wednesday nights when tacos went for a dollar. And this place had beer.

Needless to say, it's difficult to find this quality of Mexican food in Boston being as far from the border as we are. I've eaten at a few taco shops that people keep recommending and so far I haven't found anything that parallels the food I ate in California (but I'm still interested in more recommendations! I know that somewhere in Boston, there is a taco that rivals Pomona Taco Day tacos) so I've been doing my best to recreate what SoCal Mexican food at home.

Last night, Jason and I attempted fish tacos, so a lot of credit has to be given to him. He has a much better hand at getting Mexican flavors down than I do, the Mexican population being a little bit more prominent in Texas than New Jersey.

Below, the spread of goods:

Cornmeal battered tilapia, shredded red cabbage, tomato avocado salsa, Jason's sauce*, corn tortillas (but sadly, not handmade)

All this was was tilapia dredged in egg, then rolled in a mixture of salt, pepper, cornmeal and flour then deep fried in canola oil. Next time, I want to try this with my beer batter that I've made with my cheese stuffed zucchini blossoms.

Easy salsa with garlic, red onion, jalapeno, tomato, avocado, and cilantro all tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, lime juice, and a dash of urfa pepper.

The finished product! Not quite as good as Taco Nazo but even cheaper than on Dollar Taco Wednesdays.