KKF Travels: Anthony’s Pier 4 in Boston, MA

Last month Test Subject Bill and I traveled to Boston to catch a cruise ship to Bermuda. We spent the day before the cruise departed getting to know a little piece of Boston. We took water taxis from our hotel to various spots around the harbor, which was a lot more fun and about the same price as a taxi. We toured around the city a bit, visiting famous spots like Faneuil Hall and I got my picture taken with the Cheers Indian. The Contemporary Art Institute (CIA) was a pleasant surprise, as we are more traditional art lovers but found the exhibits to be beautiful and fascinating. There are some very creative minds out there. And the museum is free after 5pm on Thursdays!

Anthony’s during the day….

For our dining that night we chose Anthony’s Pier 4. I’d investigated the local eats before we ever left Atlanta; I wanted a memorable dinner and Bill wanted seafood. Anthony’s was also very close to our hotel and I was excited to learn that this restaurant has earned the Wine Spectator magazine’s “Best of Award of Excellence” for their extensive wine list.

The atmosphere at Anthony’s was pleasant, nice but not too dressy. It was a little too open for me, I prefer the nooks and crannies style of seating. However, we did have a window seat with great views of the harbor. One nice feature is that they have their proteins and desserts out on display so when you enter the dining area you can see the catch of the day (as well as the turf options, all raw).

Anthony’s at night!

The menu is primarily seafood, but it did have good options for non-fish eaters. The staff take food allergies very seriously and will double or triple check on anything to make sure they aren’t serving you something you’re allergic to. The wine list does not disappoint, although it can be very overwhelming if you’re not used to navigating a wine list the size of the King James Bible. The sommelier was very helpful in narrowing things down for us and we selected a white Burgundy.

The Macon was good and went well with our food, but I wouldn’t seek it out to try to put it in our personal collection.

The bread served initially was standard fare, but then came the popovers. They are complimentary, and served piping hot at your table. They were delicious!

Our menu choices for the evening were clam chowder ($7.95) and broiled scallops ($27.95) for Bill and lobster bisque ($11.95) and crab cakes ($29.95) for me. Bill enjoyed his clam chowder but was quite impressed with the scallops. They have become a bar for him to judge other scallops against. I thought the crab cakes were good enough, but not anything special. The lobster bisque, however, was the highlight of my meal. I could have sat there with the bisque and the popovers and been completely satisfied with my meal. I love a rich, velvety, almost chocolaty bisque and this is now tops on my list since the previous #1 lobster bisque spot holder, Isis in Las Vegas, is no longer open.

We didn’t have dessert, but the coffee was good.

Regarding the service, initially it was very good and attentive, however as the meal neared its end we saw less and less of our server and we always had to pour our own wine. That is ok, but a bit of a disappointment since the restaurant wasn’t so busy that we could understand a server not having time for that. We began to wonder if we had overstayed our welcome.

I would like to learn more about the founder of Anthony’s. There are photos of him with famous people, presidents and movie stars alike, plastered all over the walls. Therefore we dubbed this restaurant the Dante’s Down the Hatch of the Boston, since Dante has the same thing in his fondue jazz joint in Atlanta.

Bottom line: KKF approved. We would go back. Try the bisque.

KKF Eggplant: Unrolled!

Eggplant Unrolled. Note the stylish 40 year old Corelle!

Well, it happened again. I set out to follow a recipe and end up doing my own thing. I may never know how an original recipe actually tastes.

Inspired by an Eggplant Roll recipe and this marinara recipe, I came up with the following Eggplant lasagna, or non- rollatini. Rolls would have been cool, but I felt my eggplant slices were too small and it would make it more work than it was worth. The resulting bake (I hate to use the word casserole) was absolutely delicious. Not to toot my own horn, but I seriously felt it was restaurant quality. This makes a HUGE amount, so this would be a good dish to make for a crowd.

KKF Eggplant: Unrolled!

For the unrolls:
3 large eggplant, sliced ¼ inch to 3/8 inch thick
1 head of garlic, smashed and removed from skins
3/4 cup olive oil
2 cups of yogurt cheese (yogurt that has had most of the whey strained out. If you don’t have or don’t want this, you can use ricotta and have the same impact.)
1 cup of cottage cheese (or ricotta)
1 ½ cups grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese
2 cups shredded mozzarella plus some for topping the dish
A handful of minced fresh basil
1 pound ground pork
1 t salt
1 T Italian seasoning
Black pepper to taste

For the marinara:
3 T olive oil
6 cloves of the garlic used in the eggplant marinade, minced
26 oz canned diced tomatoes
16 oz can tomato sauce
7 oz can tomato paste
½ c diced mushrooms
¾ cup red wine
1 t salt
Pepper to taste

Steps:

Roasted eggplant slices

1. Toss eggplant rounds with smashed garlic cloves and the olive oil. Marinate for two hours, tossing half way through.
2. Cook the ground pork with the salt, pepper and Italian seasoning. Cool to room temperature.
3. Place eggplant rounds in a single layer on baking sheets and put in a 400 degree oven for 25-30 minutes.
4. Sauté the garlic and mushrooms in the olive oil until the garlic starts to brown. Add all the other marinara ingredients and let simmer 10 to 15 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, mix the cheeses, basil and seasoned ground pork.
6. Take a large casserole dish (I used a 9 x 11, deep dish) or two smaller dishes and put together the layers thusly: cover the bottom of the dish with marinara, then do a layer of eggplant. It’s ok if it doesn’t cover the whole bottom. Put a big dallop of the cheese/pork mix on top of each round, then press another eggplant round on top (not too hard, just flatten it out a bit). Repeat until you run out of rounds, with the cheese mix being the top layer.

Building the layers

7. Pour the rest of the marinara sauce all over the stacks of eggplant and top with the rest of the mozzarella.
8. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, until hot and bubbly throughout.

Hot, bubbly and delicious!

Spicy Noodle Soup

I have a confession to make. Even though I’m a real foodie to the core….I have a dirty secret. I love Shin Ramyun Hot n’ Spicy. This is no ordinary ramen noodle processed food product. It’s shameful deliciousness. It’s Korea’s favorite ramen, and mine too. In fact, the only ramen I would even eat. And hey, I was making it with homemade chicken stock and adding good stuf like free range chicken. That redeems something, right?

My desire to make this addiction more tolerable has led to me to try to reproduce it at home without the gluten, soy, MSG, etc., and whatever other nasty crap is in it. So I found this recipe and ofcourse, modified in true KKF style.

This recipe comes darn close to a reasonable replication of my beloved Shin Ramyun

Spicy Noodle Not Ramyun!

KKF Spicy Korean Noodle Soup

3/4 cup dried mushrooms, reconstituted

2 T soy sauce

2 T Ponzu sauce

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 t coconut oil

1 T red chili flakes

4 cups poultry stock (I used smoked turkey stock I made from the bird I smoked on the Green Egg)

6 oz diced chicken (I plan to try tuna, pork and shrimp in the future)

1 T gochujang (Korean chili pepper paste)

1 egg, beaten (optional – I didn’t find it brough much to the dish except for extra protien, which is reason enough to add it.)

6 oz Asian vermicelli (rice or bean thread noodles/celophane noodles)

1 t salt

Cook noodles in boiling water for 5 minutes. Rinse with cold water and cut into more manageable pieces if they are really long.

Melt coconut oil and saute garlic for a few minutes, then add the red pepper flakes, soy sauce and mushrooms with the liquid you reconstituted them in. Boil for a few minutes, then add the stock. Bring to a boil, add gochujang, salt and Ponzu sauce. Add chicken, bring back to a simmer and whisk in the beaten egg, if using.

Simmer for 10 minutes, add the noodles and simmer for another 4-5 minutes until everything is heated through. Grab yourself some chop sticks and dig in!

KKF Green Juice!

In one of my favorite movies, So I Married An Axe Murderer , the main character, Charlie, visits his parents to discover that his mom has purchased a Juice Tiger and “juices everything now” ala the Weekly World News Garth Brooks Juice Diet. While Charlie’s Mom did refer to a tabloid as “the paper” she may have been onto something with the juice…

Juice Fountain, Juice Tiger. Whatever you call it, it juices stuff at a prodigious rate.

Juicing fans believe that by juicing vegetables your body is better able to absorb the vitamins. They are not damaged by cooking, and you can consume a lot more vegetable nutrients in a glass of juice than you could eat in a sitting (or a day, or a week for some people!) Dr. Mercola has an excellent article on juicing here. If you want more reasons to juice, watch Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead or The Beautiful Truth: The World’s Simplest Cure for Cancer or Hungry For Change. (These are all great documentaries, by the way, regardless of if you want to start juicing or not!)

So I went out and bought myself a Juice Tiger. Ok, it’s actually a Breville BJE200XL 700-Watt Compact Juice Fountain . And let me tell you, I’ve been having more fun with this thing than should be permitted! Sticking stuff in and watching it tear it apart never fails to make me feel better. It generates so much lift that if you take your hand off the plunger when it’s running, it almost pushes it back out. Now that’s entertainment.

KKF Green Juice ingredients.

I made fresh orange juice this morning. 5 oranges for two people was perfect. And amazingly delicious. But more fruit (and the sugar therein) is not my primary goal for this new gadget. It’s veggies. I’ve discovered that for the most part, just throwing stuff in there (say, carrots, celery, parsley, ginger and a cucumber) and letting it rip results in a brownish juice that does not taste terrible. And that’s fine in a pinch, but I recommend going with some tried and true recipes. Generally, a bunch of veggies and a piece of fruit will do the trick. The little bit of sweet helps offset any bitterness in the veggies. Of course, some carrot juice is sweet all on its own…

Here’s a juice recipe I adapted from the cookbook that came with my copy of Hungry for Change.

KKF Green Juice

1 cucumber

1 small green apple

1 kiwi

2 inch piece of ginger, peeled

3 stalks of celery

bunch of parsley

bunch of cilantro

large handful of kale

1/4 head of fennel

Juice according to your juicer’s instructions. Makes one large serving.

You can't even taste the kale!

Pork Belly Euphoria

Pork belly. Also known as pork side or middlen. The most treasured part of any hog purchase because it is used to MAKE BACON.

But every now and then you have to try something new.

At a recent visit to Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta I had the fried pork belly appetizer with sorghum glaze. UH.MAZE.ING. I was initially going to share with the rest of my dinner companions but after I took a bite I told them to stick it. Restaurant Eugene is a fantastic farm-to-table restaurant and we can’t wait to go back once we get done paying the last installment for our last meal, if you get my drift…

So that got me thinking. Of course bacon is a thing of beauty, but what if I could make a similar pork belly recipe? Hello, Google…and I found Dan Barber’s Pork Belly. You do have to plan in advance for this recipe because it needs to cure for three days before being slow cooked for 7 hours, but honestly the overall time investment was minimal, making this an easy and delcious recipe.

I followed the recipe almost exactly. For the cure mix, I forgot to buy star anise so I subbed dried basil because I smell anise in basil sometimes. (Don’t ask me for rational explanations.) I used ground white pepper instead of whole white peppercorns. I subbed celery seed for fennel seed. Also, I scaled back the sugar a little bit. Since I had a 3 pound pork belly and the recipe called for a six pounder, I halved the cure mix.

After blending the cure mix I rubbed it all over my partially thawed belly, then packed the cure around it, wrapped it up in wax paper then aluminum foil. It sat in the fridge for a little over three days. When it came time to cook, I rinsed as directed. Since I had failed to cut off the skin before curing (duh to me, I’ll take it off first next time) I cut the belly in half and ran it through my Chef’s Choice Electric Food Slicer to cut off the tough skin. I put the two pieces fat side down in a ceramic dish, poured two full quarts of chicken stock over it and covered with foil.

In it went for 7 hours.

When time was up, I pulled the dish out and took a look. Not terribly impressive looking. Kind of like a huge chunk of lame, pasty bacon. Good thing I wasn’t done yet!

I cut the two halves into 8 chunks each and fired up the cast iron skillet. Frying first on the fat side for 3-4 minutes until it got nice and dark and carmely and crunchy, then on each side for a minute or so until the entire small chunk was crunchy and brown.

CAUTION. DO NOT FRY THESE CHUNKS UNLESS YOU HAVE A SPLATTER SCREEN BIG ENOUGH TO COVER YOUR WHOLE SKILLET. It WILL splatter all over God’s green earth and burn you and your loved ones if you don’t cover it up.

Safety first!

While the pork belly goodness was frying I was also frying up some cubed red potatoes in butter with a few tablespoons of Mill Creek Spice’s Steak Seasoning. Man, is that some good stuff.

Anyway, so once you have your well-crisped chunks of pork belly, drain as you please and enjoy. This made me do a dance in the kitchen, just ask Test Subject Bill. Good luck eating more than two. They are SUPER rich but unbelievably tasty. I think it might be better than bacon.

But a word to the wise – make this for a crowd! This is way too much for two people and good enough to share with your best friends! Also, consider serving with something pickled or maybe a salad with vinaigrette just to cut the richness of the fat. It is a thing of beauty. Ah, pork belly euphoria!!

Pork belly and seasoned spuds!

KKF Fast Food: Salmon Patties with Lemon-Thyme Cream

Salmon Patties with Lemon-Thyme Cream on Wilted Swiss Chard

I recently got in on a bulk wild salmon purchase from Lummi Island which included some ground salmon. (You even got a free hat with purchase. Gotta love the freebies.)

On nights that I have classes at the gym I need something quick AND I’m a sucker for anything fried in butter, so tonight I tried my hand at some salmon burgers – turned out delicious!

KKF Salmon Patties with Lemon-Thyme Cream

1 lb. ground salmon

2 eggs

1 T Old Bay seasoning

2-3 T butter

For the cream:

1/2 c sour cream

1/2 T lemon juice

1/2 t lemon zest

6-7 sprigs of fresh thyme

Mix together the ingredients for the cream and set aside. Mix up the ground salmon, Old Bay, and eggs. Melt butter in a cast iron frying pan. Shape salmon into balls (as many or few as you’d like, I made 6). They will be loose and not really hold their shape at this point. When the butter is melted and hot, place the salmon balls in the pan and press down lightly to form patties. Flip after a few minutes of frying. When patties feel firm, they are done. Serve hot with lemon thyme cream.

Hint: if you used unsalted butter, you may want to add 1/4 tsp or so of salt to your salmon mix, or try adding it to the cream.

This was VERY fast. I got home from yoga, made this and wilted some swiss chard in bacon fat (heck yeah) and was done eating within an hour. Easy and delish, as a KKF fast food should be!

Sweet n’ Sour Pork Balls

Test subject Bill loves pork, so I’m always looking for new ways to make pork. He also has a tough time swallowing ground beef because of the gristle/connective tissue that’s often a part of beef…but not so much with pork! So ground pork is the convenience food of choice in our house.

I was inspired by this recipe over at AllRecipes. White sugar is something I avoid so every time I see it in a recipe I’m always tweaking to see how to get out of it. This turned out fantastic. I don’t even have a picture because they are GONE.

KKF Sweet n Sour Pork Balls

1 1/2 lbs ground pork

16 oz. tomato sauce

1 cup water

1/4 c maple syrup

1 T sucanat (you could use white sugar if you want, or increase the maple syrup)

1 T Worcestershire sauce

1 t Italian seasoning

1 t chili powder

1 t apple cider vinegar

1/2 t salt

Preheat oven to 350 degress. Form the ground pork into balls and place in a glass baking dish. Stir together all the other ingredients in a saucepan and heat lightly. Taste and adjust seasonings to your preference. Pour the sauce over the balls and bake for 45-60 minutes, depending on how big you made your pork balls.

We had this over rice with broccoli on the side. It was fantastic, used waaaay less sweetener than the original recipe, and was still pleasantly sweet.

When I make this again I’ll try to remember to take a picture so I can come back and post it!