by Sara Mead
Last night Matt and I had a delicious dinner courtesy of our friend the lovely Ayelish McGarvey. Everything–green salad, roast chicken with roasted vegetables–was delightful. But the best part was the dessert: Meyer Lemon Budino topped with powdered sugar and berries. Normally, I’m a hard sell on non-chocolate desserts, but this was awesome. Recipe here.
Also a question: Where in D.C. does one acquire meyer lemons?
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By Emily Thorson
What’d you eat on Christmas? I think the traditional Christmas meal is odd because it’s so similar to the Thanksgiving meal. And we JUST FINISHED those leftovers, dammit.
My family has two meals on Christmas day, and both are roughly Swedish-themed (note my last name):
Lunch consists of several smaller foods: tiny open-face egg salad and shrimp sandwiches, olives, good cheese, crackers (especially Wasa), pate, salami, and then the fishes: gravlax and herring. This year’s spread was on the small side since some of the family couldn’t make it, but I took a few photographs.
Oh man, I *love* herring. This is the fresh stuff, but you can get little jars of “herring in wine sauce” at the grocery store and it is fantastic–ideal for a quick snack and filled with health omega-3′s (or o-3 fatties, as I call them. No, seriously I do).
For dinner we have Swedish meatballs with egg noodles, homeade bread, lingonberry sauce, and a token vegetable of some sort (this year it was roasted carrots). It’s a light dinner–we’ve usually spent the entire day eating candy from the stocking, so no one is *starving*.
But really–what DO other people eat for Christmas dinner? Do you really roast an entire turkey/ham and cook up some stuffing and cranberry sauce?
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The classic Christmas candy. What would your Christmas stocking be without a candy cane to top it off?
Candy Canes date back to at least the 17th century (originally as a decoration for Christmas trees). Some Christians believe that the cane’s shape represents Jesus’ identity as The Good Shepherd and the white and red symbolize his purity from sin and his blood shed on the cross. This strikes me as something made up after the fact. Anyone, regardless of religious beliefs or lack thereof, can enjoy this holiday’s most classic treat.
Merry Christmas. Joy to the World. May your holiday be a sweet one, filled with love, friends, laughter, and of course, candy.
‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;–Clement Clark Moore, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (1822)
Between this iconic Christmas poem and the Nutcracker’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” (pictured above), sugar plums have become part of our Christmas vocabulary. But what the devil are they? I always assumed they were just a sort of old-fashioned way of referring to sweets generally, but apparently there actually is a confection known as a sugar plum. This brave food blogger from Toronto tries it out.
By Ezra Klein
Matt notes that asking him about burritos is “a bit like asking a Californian for bagel recommendations.” That needn’t be true. New York does have some good burritos. And Matt has been to California. And his taste in food is generally quite good. But his recommendations are deeply worrying.
Start with Well-Dressed Burrito. When I first came to DC, and first complained about the absence of Mexican food, this is what Matt, and our then-colleage, Sam Rosenfeld, said to shush me. It’ll be okay, they promised. We’ll go to Well-Dressed. The atmospherics were good. Well-Dressed Burrito is on 19th st, in a small alley. Alley food is generally good, otherwise it wouldn’t survive. Well-Dressed is not good. It’s the other thing. Bad.
Well-Dressed belongs to that particular class of restaurants that obscures taste with calories. The burritos are HUGE. They rip beneath the weight, and the grease, of their filling. But that’s all they taste of: Grease, and meat texture, and stuff. They’re what would happen if you sauted the base burrito ingredients in lots of oil then put the product in a blender. Filling, yes. But not a good burrito.
If you’re looking for a burrito in Downtown DC, I don’t know what to tell you. I’d probably counsel Chipotle. It’s not a traditional burrito, but it’s better at doing whatever it is that it’s doing than its competitors are at offering a satisfying burrito experience. Our range, however, is Washington, DC. And here I can help. When I moved to town, I lived at 14th and Chapin. Walking the streets one winter night, homesick and hungry, I came across a little joint called Ercilia’s, on Mt. Pleasant and Irving. They served me a burrito of well-marinated meat and rice and jalapeno and topped it all with warming ranchero sauce and melted cheese. That’s a burrito. It tasted of home. Within a few months, I’d move to Mt. Pleasant. Fast Burrito, at the top of the street, also serves a delicious burrito. Pollo Sabrosa has wonderful tacos — just tortilla and meat and onion and cilantro, try the tongue — and so too does Tacos District Federal, on 14th and Oak (try the chorizo and the goat). Don Jaimes, at Mt. Pleasant and Lamont, has the bext Mexican breakfast in town. Get the huevos rancheros, the huevos divorciados, the migas, or the chorizo wrap.
If you’re not in Mt. Pleasant, Mixtec, at 18th and Columbia, is good, but much too expensive. Dos Pepitos Bakery, on Columbia near Citybikes, is much better, and much cheaper. There’s also a taco cart on Columbia road that I haven’t tried.
Posted in Bars & Restaurants
By Matthew Yglesias
There’s been some interest over at my other blog on the question of where you might go in Washington, DC for a decent burrito. I note as a prelude that I was born and raised in New York City, and then went to college in Boston before moving to DC. So asking me about burritos is a bit like asking a Californian for bagel recommendations.
That said, in my view there are two answers to this question. One, that I used to frequent when I worked at The American Prospect, is The Well-Dressed Burrito located in an alley that runs between 19th and 18th streets between L and M. The other, that I frequent now that I work at the Center for American Progress, is Pedro & Vinny’s, which is really just one guy in a cart on 15th and K. Pedro & Vinny’s is typically known as “the burrito cart” and offers an extremely limited menu. It is, however, by far the best vegetarian option in town. During decent weather, the line can get prohibitively long, but the winter tends to reduce people’s interest in the outdoor line concept and leads to smoother service. Well-Dressed has a pretty extensive menu.
I note from the fact that both good burrito places are in non-standard locations that there appears to be something about the DC market for retail space that makes good burritos non-viable. The only way to make money as a burrito salesperson is to get rock-bottom rents by working out of a cart or an alley, and I don’t exactly know why that is. The moral of the story, however, is that everything relates to land-use and urban planning so people should pay more attention.
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By Becks
You’ve seen us link many times to our favorite recipes from America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated. They really are the masters when it comes to perfecting classic recipes. What’s sometimes overlooked is that the geniuses from that empire also turn their talents to flyover country favorites under their Cook’s Country brand. As a casserole-loving Midwesterner, I’m glad to see them giving more humble food the attention it deserves. Someone needs to be asking the important questions, like “What if we took an amazing brownie and covered it with peppermint bark?”
I made this recipe for the first time for the cookie swap and, y’all, it’s seriously good. It’s going directly into my holiday recipe rotation. First of all, the brownie recipe is quick and simple yet leagues better than what you could get out of a mix. It’s ooey gooey fudgetastic. I’m lucky I even got them into the oven — Kriston and I wanted to just eat all of the batter. And the peppermint bark on top really elevates them to another level.
The only issue is that they aren’t very pretty because the peppermint bark kind of breaks up when you try to cut them but this might be fixed by scoring the bark or cutting them when the chocolate’s still warm. But, really, who cares? You’re going to want to eat them all right out of the pan anyway.
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This is my very, very favorite Christmas candy.
By Emily Thorson
I just finished the penultimate semester of classes in my PhD program, which is one of the reasons I’ve been lax in posting to this blog. Or, to be honest, reading some of the entries. Apparently there’s some show? About cooking? People watch it? Whatevs, let’s talk about food.
The thing about being in grad school is that (a) you end up spending maybe 10-12 hours a day at work and (b) you’re relatively poor. This means that unless I want to subsist entirely on Wawa sandwiches (NOT NECESSARILY THE WORST FATE but also not the cheapest), I have to make and bring a LOT of lunches. And dinners.
Part of my solution: FREEZE STUFF. Yup, I have turned into one of those crazy hippie people who makes giant batches of mysterious-looking food and then heats them up for lunch. My plan for this holiday break, unless I get distracted by re-watching all seven seasons of the Gilmore Girls, is to share some of these recipes.
First up: Curried Lentils With Sweet Potatoes and Swiss Chard (via the NYT, although suprisingly NOT Mark Bittman–it was part of a “Thanksgiving for vegetarians” article a year or so ago).
This recipe is AWESOME. It fills my three requirements for freeze-and-bring: that it have protein, that it have vegetables (preferably of the leafy green variety), and that it freeze without any serious reduction in quality.
It also makes a crap-ton of food, so if you make it then either be willing to eat it for the next week straight or clear out some room in your freezer. I see no real need to reproduce the recipe here since you can click over to the NYT, but a few comments: I double the ginger and do include the jalapeno seeds; this recipe benefits from some spice. Do NOT leave out the lime zest even though limes are a pain in the ass to zest (no, I don’t have a microplane, thanks for asking) and do NOT leave out the cilantro even though you can’t believe the godddamn Superfresh is charging you THAT much for cilantro that to be honest looks a little wonky. It is absolutely fine to leave out the scallions and almonds: garnish schmarnish. Oh, and I’ve subbed in both kale and collards before with acceptable results, although chard is definitely the best. If you can, bring some plain yogurt to eat with it (if you’re really ambitious, mix the yogurt with some mint and cucumber beforehand).
The other bonus side effect of this dish is that it smells fantastic when you reheat it in the work microwave, so as you carry it back to your desk everyone with their seven-dollar crap deli lunches are all “Ooooo, what’s that?” and you’re all offhandedly like “Oh, just something I put together.” But as you gloat try to sort of hide the actual dish with your arm because I have to admit–being mostly an orangey-green mush, it’s not the most attractive of meals. BUT SO GOOD.
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