A Day Late and a Dollar Short

The school year's begun and Wednesday came and went without me realizing I ought to be updating. I hope to be able to maintain a regular schedule as things progress, but what we'll see where my stress levels end up. Hartford was already topsy turvy when the school year began (thank you Dan Malloy for the budget cuts) but to make things more interesting, the superintendent just quit.

That's not what this blog is about, though. So, without further ado...here's how to make Sausages and Cream Sauce, all credit due to Marcella Hazen. To begin with, you will need:

1 Pound Ground Sweet Sausage

1.5 Shallots, Chopped

4 Tablespoons of Butter

Shredded Parmagiano Reggiano

1.5 Cups Heavy Cream

2 POUNDS OF ELBOWS!

This.

Also, this. 

And Two Tablespoons of this stuff.

Step One:

Put shallots, onion and butter into a pot. Turn on medium heat and cook until the onion is a nice pale gold. Then add the sausage and cook for about ten minutes.

Step Two:

Add a little pepper and all the cream. Turn the heat up to medium high and cook until the cream thickens. Add salt to taste.

Step Three:

Serve over cooked and drained elbows and add liberal amounts of parmagiano reggiano. Stupid simple, tasty, and fed me for a couple of days.

Next week...another restaurant!

Flatcaps Vs Tacos

It was Saturday night and my house was essentially out of food. My friend Josh dropped in and we talked restaurants. He didn't want burgers, didn't want Italian, and hates sushi. Your best option under such circumstances is usually tacos. For food blog purposes, Chipotle and Moes aren't a thing. No point reviewing big chain food you can get anywhere in the country. For food purposes, Taco Bell isn't a thing. Because it isn't food.

We decided to give the Lucky Taco a try.

The Lucky Taco opened as a restaurant in 2014 after years as a successful food truck. The restaurant is on the site of the now defunct Brass Key, which was a Manchester institution going back almost as far as Shady Glen. This is a sin for which Josh refuses to forgive them. But he will eat their burritos.

Saturday nights is $5 margarita night, so I opened things up by ordering one. This gave Josh the opportunity to low key make fun of me for ordering a margarita. But, as my usual liquor of choice is single malt Scotch, I was happy to drink it anyway.

It had blood orange in it and it was tasty.

We decided that if a Tex-Mex place is going to be worth it's salt, they had better do a good job of chips and queso. We asked the waitress about portion sizes and, determining a single order could feed both of us, started with that.

The result was excellent. In the opinion of a couple of elitist gentlemen wearing flat caps, the Lucky Taco cooks know what they're doing. We decided to move on to buritos.

I went with a pork carnitas burrito, which is a delicious combination of shredded pork, beans, rice, tomato, salsa, guacamole, and cheese.

Josh had a  Newport chicken burrito, which, in addition to chicken has, guacamole, pepper jack cheese, bacon, chipotle mayo, lettuce, and tomatoes.

Here he is looking slightly intimidated to eat it.

The bottom line here is that, if you have to replace an old school Manchester institution with something new, best for it to be with a place like this. This is head and shoulders above other Tex-Mex I've had in town, and isn't that much more expensive than the aforementioned Moes or Chipotle. They're fairly small but all the wait staff was genuinely friendly and the atmosphere in the restaurant and attached cantina was warm and inviting. I would definitely recommend this place and will definitely be returning.

Simple Risotto

So why the hell would you listen to me about making food? I slice open my thumb and have food accidents. Reasonably, you probably shouldn't. But a person you should listen to is Amanda Freitag, and I'm using a slightly modified version of her recipe, here. I highly recommend her book, The Chef Next Door. It's designed for home cooks with little to no experience and has improved my cooking skills immensely. In short, when I do what she says, 95% of the time it turns out awesome.

So. If you too would like awesome food, try this:

You will need:

4 cups of Chicken or Vegetable stock.

 Amanda has a recipe for making stock and Anthony Bourdain would give me serious side-eye for using store bought stuff, but if I'm making this, I'm typically in a hurry. Also, I hardly ever make chicken, so the prerequisite 5 pounds of chicken bones just isn't something I have. Amanda also basically says, hey, it's your kitchen, use store bought stock if you want.

4 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter and a Large Onion

You can get away with one tablespoon, but one thing Bourdain does approve of is adding a fuckton of butter to your food.

1 Cup Arborio Rice

 Actually, there are three kinds of rice that can be used to make risotto. Arborio is one of them, but there is also Vialone Nano and Carnaroli.

Salt and Pepper

I'm breaking with tradition here, but I added a cup of shredded Asiago at the end.

 

 Before you do anything else, chop and peel the onion:

Pour the stock into a pot and heat it over low heat. Melt the butter in another pot, again over low heat.

Add the onion and a pinch of salt. Saute until translucent, making sure it doesn't brown.

Add the rice and stir to coat it with butter.

Add a cup of hot stock to the rice. Stir and simmer over medium-low until the stock is absorbed into the rice. Repeat this process until the stock is gone and the rice is cooked. Pour in the Asiago and season with salt and pepper.

 Serve!

I Need A Space Pun!

This week I'm reviewing the Cosmic Omelet. There really should be a pun of some kind to go with a name like that, but I can't summon anything above the level of dad jokes, so I'll refrain.

With menus like this, I suspect they'll be happy to make some for me.

Speaking of dads, mine was having a birthday, so I decided to bring him along for the ride. As breakfast places go, the Cosmic Omelet is arguably the most famous in town, and has been since I was in high school. When people wanted to know where my parents' house was, I'd use it as a reference. When most of the town lost power in the October 2011 snowstorm, this place was miraculously open and provided warmth, shelter, wi-fi, and most importantly, hot food to the surrounding community. Not gratis of course, but we were glad it was there. It's also the kind of place that is popular enough with locals (and large enough) that if you live here, you are very likely to run into someone you know.

A couple people came over to wish Dad a happy birthday. The waiter did too, because he was nice like that.

As you might guess, the omelettes here are awesome. Also, there are a ton of options. You could eat here every morning for a month and not have the same omelet twice, and that's not including the ability to fully customize your own. There's also the usual breakfast staples of French toast, pancakes, Eggs Benedict and the like. I've never had them and know no one who has come here and not gotten the omelettes.

If you come for lunch and aren't feeling omelety (why would you come here if you did not like omelettes?) they also have a full range of wraps, sandwiches, burgers, and quesadillas. No idea how they are, either.

This time around, I went with Steve's Irish Omelet, which is made with corned beef hash and American cheese. I confess that this is my usual go to when I come here.

White toast and hash browns make things perfect.

Dad, likewise a creature of habit, ordered Joey's Cosmic Omelet without looking at the menu. This has sausage, hot peppers, mushrooms, cream cheese, and cheddar. I'm not sure how I feel about cream cheese in an omelette, but it's good enough to make Dad a repeat customer.

Look at him being all healthy with his wheat toast. 

In summary, this place is always a good eating experience, even if, like at Shady Glen, I am a creature of habit here. In fact, if you're looking to have the ultimate townie dining experience, you could do no other than the Cosmic Omelet for breakfast and Shady Glen for lunch. It's not the former's fault that they spell omelette wrong.

Next week: more experimentation! Hopefully with less slicing of appendages.

Adventures in Food Catastrophe

In my introductory post, I said I would write about falling on my ass while making food, knowing that it would inevitably happen. I had planned to make a post with an easy risotto recipe, but this is more epic and takes precedent. So, I give you:

What Not To Do With...

Tomatillos

An Onion

Eggs, Chopped Basil, Butter, and Olive Oil

Begin by watching chefs chop things up on TV. Note that they work much, much, much faster than you do. Decide that you could stand to work a little bit faster, even though you wouldn't be that fast.

Next, slice open the top of your thumb.

Cover it with a paper towel so you can continue cooking while bleeding

A side note...I have never had tomatillos before and they are really, really tasty! I had a few slices raw, and I could eat them like that all day. But, back to the recipe for disaster:

CHOP. UP. THIS. ONION.

Chop up peppers of I forget what variety but they start with 's'. No, not serranos. Another kind. Take two tablespoons of butter and a splash of olive oil and heat it in a pan on medium heat. Crack four eggs. Throw in the onions once the butter is melted and set a timer for eight minutes. Two minutes into that, throw in the tomatillos. Wait another two minutes and add the peppers.

Notice that's nothing's browning like it should be. Cook for about thirteen minutes total and add the eggs. Scramble the fuck out of the entire mess and let cook for two more minutes. End up with this:

 If I'm honest, it tasted decent. Not feed it to somebody else decent, but...I made this, need breakfast, and don't feel the need to add ketchup decent. The tomatillos add a lot of flavor, and I look forward to more successful experiments with them in the future.

Much Wow. Such Restaurant.

Center Perk is a small breakfast and lunch place on Main Street, across from the Mary Cheney Library (and Center Park, which surrounds it.) The first time I heard about it, I thought the name sounded like...

...but it turns out I was living under a rock in the 90's, and Central Perk was the name of the coffee house in Friends. Hopefully no one gets sued for a copyright violation.

 Despite the name, Center Perk is not Friends themed. I was pleasantly surprised to find it filled with old Manchester Americana.

This makes for a nice segue from my last restaurant review, Shady Glen, itself a piece of old Manchester Americana. There are photographs from early 20th century baseball games as well as photographs and illustrations of Main Street from the same era.

Center Perk is a seat yourself place and at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning, there was plenty available. Most everyone there was a regular, or at least, they all knew each other's names and didn't need menus to order. A few Yelp reviews complain of long wait times and inattentive servers, but I found the opposite to be true. I was in and out in about 40 minutes, everyone was friendly, and food came quickly.

I ordered raisin oatmeal pancakes with a side of corned beef hash.

The corned beef hash was good and the pancakes were quite possibly the best I've ever had. It would never have occurred to me to mix oats in there, but apparently this is a thing everyone should do. Just as a head's up, though, if you want Maple syrup to go with your pancakes, it'll cost you a dollar extra. All in all, though, an excellent experience. I will definitely be coming back in the future.

Seared Duck and Chopped Pokemon

What do you do when you want to eat duck but have no idea how to cook one? You could go to a restaurant, but outside of the ultra-expensive Cavey's, I don't know if anyone serves it here in town. So the real option is acquire yourself some duck breasts and consult Lord Google for oracular advice on how to cook them.

Lord Google turned up a recipe for 'Seared Duck Breast with Cherries and Port Sauce.' I don't know anything about Diane Rossen Worthington, but doing this recipe meant I got to drink port, so I approved.

Also it went in the sauce.

Speaking of sauce, we doubled the recipe:

Two duck breasts

Four Tablespoons of Butter

Two Shallots (Half a Cup Chopped)

One Cup Chicken Stock

Sixteen Fresh Pitted Cherries. 

Four Tablespoons Port (we used Sandeman Tawny Port and it was awesome!)

Two Tablespoons Orange Blossom Honey

You get to begin this whole process by beating the crap out of some ducks, which was a novel concept for me, anyway. Natalie had some kind of spiked hammer thing, and I hit the meat until it was even.

After that you score the skin without cutting into the meat. Harrowing, but we pulled it off.

 Ms. Worthington says:

"Melt 1 tablespoon butter in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle duck with salt and pepper. Add duck, skin side down, to skillet and cook until skin is browned and crisp, about 5 minutes. Turn duck breasts over, reduce heat to medium, and cook until browned and cooked to desired doneness, about 4 minutes longer for small breasts and 8 minutes longer for large breast for medium-rare. Transfer to work surface, tent with foil to keep warm, and let rest 10 minutes."

For us that was two tablespoons of butter, but otherwise the timing was the same.

"Meanwhile, pour off all but 2 tablespoons drippings from skillet. Add shallot to skillet and stir over medium heat 30 seconds. Add broth, cherries, Port, and honey. Increase heat to high and boil until sauce is reduced to glaze, stirring often, about 3 minutes. Whisk in (two) tablespoons cold butter. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper."

After that whole process, you thinly slice the duck, arrange it into some kind of fancy fan on a plate, and spoon on the sauce. You do it right, it looks like this:

I'm going to go ahead and say we did it right, because it tasted awesome!

So, end result was very tasty, but not very experimental beyond not having made duck before.

Enter the Pattypan. Which is not something you call a vegetable. My best guess is it's a plant based Pokemon of some kind. Or was. We caught it in the Simsbury area, took it home, and put it under the knife. As you do.

Lord Google suggests stuffing it like a pepper, but it was decided that this was too much work. So we chopped up two of them and cooked them in a pan with shallots, oregano, salt, and pepper. End result, also pretty fantastic.

 So, there you have it. Fancy duck and chopped Pokemon. Next week, a new restaurant!

Shady Glen

If I'm going to write about food in Manchester, I have to start with Shady Glen. It's been here since the 40's and is diner fare like you used to be able to get, back in the day. It boasts milk shakes made like they're supposed to taste, fantastic secret-recipe cheeseburgers, and the best ice cream in town. Credit cards? Not here, pal. That's a product of a decade yet to happen. Be sure to bring cash or use the ATM, which is conveniently located in the corner of the building.

The restaurant is located at 840 East Middle Turnpike, right on the edge of the Bolton town line. There is another location in the Manchester Parkade, but it's not as as old and I remember as a kid considering it rather illegitimate. In order for the visit to 'count,' you had to go to the original. Good enough for James Cagney and Paul Newman, good enough for me.

Shady Glen is typically a 'seat yourself' type place, but it gets busy enough at certain times that you may find yourself waiting. To avoid the rush, my friend Natalie and I went a little after noon on a weekday. We both work in education and summers off are a beautiful thing.

Unlike many of the establishments I want to review for this blog, here I have an established routine. Things must be started with a milk shake.

At a guess, the milkshakes here are better than elsewhere because the ice cream is superior, but really I have no idea. It doesn't matter. Buy one. Drink one. You won't be disappointed.

Then, you order fried cheese. Which, yes, is a thing you can get in a lot of places, and none that look or taste like this. The milk shake and the fried cheese will keep you busy while you wait for cheeseburgers. There are hot dogs; you can order them and they're good. But don't. Get cheeseburgers.

This is the Bernice Original Cheeseburger, named after Bernice Rieg, one of the original owners. Nobody outside the restaurant knows quite how they do that folding the cheese bit, but its tasty as hell, and duplicated, as far as I know, nowhere else in the world. Typically, these things come with fries, and the fries, to be honest, are not much to write home about. They do give you more than enough ketchup to make this a nonissue, however.

When at Shady Glen, always, always finish your meal with ice cream. Natalie had a Sundae:

And I went with cookie dough:

One of the other nice things about Shady Glen is that their sizes make sense. When you order a small ice cream, you don't get some monolithic supersized portion of small. It's just the right size, and totally makes up for being watched by demonic, child-stealing elves in the corner.

Yeah, I don't know. Creepy. But the bottom line is that this place is totally worth the lack of credit cards and occasional theft of babies by the Unseelie Court. If you find yourself stuck in Manchester, and only have enough time to eat at one place, eat here.