Restaurants

Sherry Cobbler at Scott & Co., Tucson, AZ

February 13, 2014 by polishhousewife 1 Comment

Keeping up with the retro-cocktail craze, here’s one from the 80s – the 1880s! Sherry Cobbler was one of the most popular summer drinks for most of that decade. Cool and refreshing, packing less of an alcoholic punch than many cocktails, Sherry Cobbler is easy to enjoy, and one that I’ll be serving our guests.

I tried my first Sherry Cobbler Scott & Co. in downtown Tucson, a hipster, speak-easy style bar featuring artisan cocktails. Our daughter and I were having dinner at 47 Scott before seeing Jonny Lang at the historic Rialto. After our meal, she suggested we move next door to the bar because she loved their cocktails. We went down the long, maze like hallway that connects the restaurant and bar.

Like the restaurant, Scott & Co. is a small, intimate space. On a weekday evening, the tables were full, but the couple to our right were kind enough to move down and offer us both a seat at the bar. Because they’re known for specialty (labor intensive) cocktails, the sole bartender was very busy. After watching his artistry, my daughter made eye contact and requested our Sherry Cobblers. He efficiently worked us into the line up of several cocktail shakers that he was simultaneously preparing. The bar was dark enough that I didn’t even try to get a photo with my phone. So the one you see here is one I prepared at home.

If you find yourself in downtown Tucson before/after a concert or the theater, I highly recommend Scott & Co. Great drinks and you can carry on a conversation without shouting – what a nice change. If you want to shake up a Sherry Cobbler at home, as I’ll need to do now that I’ve returned to Poznan, here’s the recipe:

Sherry Cobbler

Prep Time: 5 mins
Total Time: 5 mins
Yield: 1
Category: Cocktail
Cuisine: American

Description

A cool refreshing retro-cocktail from the 1880s

Ingredients

4 ounces sherry
1/4 ounce simply syrup
2 orange slices, halved
ice

Instructions

Add the sherry, simple syrup, orange slices and ice to a cocktail shaker
Shake vigorously for 10 – 15 seconds
Strain into a glass filled with cracked ice
Garnish with an additional orange slice or fresh berries

Notes

Variation: add 1/3 ounce of Triple Sec and 2 ounces of club soda

Our concert that event also comes with high marks. I’d never been to the Rialto before, but I liked the venue, and Jonny Lang and his band put a terrific show.

Atelier Amaro, Poland’s First Michelin Starred Restaurant

September 22, 2013 by polishhousewife 4 Comments

Ed had to be in eastern part of Poland for a trade show a few weeks ago, we made plans for me to meet him in Warsaw at the end of the week. While he was away, I learned that a Warsaw restaurant, Atelier Amaro had been given a Michelin star earlier this year, Poland’s first. I’d just finished reading Gordon Ramsey’s autobiography, so I had a better idea of what that star entailed.

If you want to go to Atelier Amaro, make a reservation at least three weeks in advance. With our last-minute (two days in advance) request, we didn’t find out until 3:00 PM on Friday that they would have a table for us that evening.

We splurged on their eight course tasting menu. Let me walk you through it with pictures. If you know Polish food, you’ll see the inspiration for these very modern creations, but there were no traditional perogi in sight. It was a fun evening full of memorable dishes, interestingly presented – some of the simpler ones will be making an appearance in our dining room.

The menu changes weekly

Before we got to the first course, we had three amouse bouches:

apple crisps with a marjoram puree (grooves were cut in the serving dish so the crisp, thin slices of apple stood upright)
a golf ball sized tidbit that looked like a little pearlescent apple but was actually made of apricot, herring, and horseradish
sweet potato chips served with goose fat and garlic (I realized that I love goose fat)

Then a bread basket arrived with three kinds of bread, two of which were delicious but normal. The third bread was black. Our waiter told us that the black bread got its color from hay ash (processed to get just the right texture) and also included seeds and nuts. This recipe took months to perfect. The hay ash made an appearance several times during the evening. The little apple mentioned above had a stem made from hay ash.

Our first course came and went without a photo. A thick slice of tomato, smoked, with vanilla salt, and I’m not sure what mirabelle is, maybe a type of plum?. Have you heard of it?

Here we have herring with preserved cucumber, a green apple-chive ice cream, watercress, and jam
Served on a thick chunk of pink Himalayan salt which imparted a wonderful salty taste

This was presented without the broth, the waiter added the consomme at the table
This is oxtail with powdered leek, plum and “fermented bread” (our waiter words, I think we would say sour dough)

No photo of the goat cheese with bison grass and hazelnut. I won’t say that I didn’t like this dish, the taste was nice, but it didn’t leave us saying, “Wow! How did he come up with this?” like the other dishes did.

A sunchoke with boletus mushroom and purslane (succulent leaves that some may call a weed)
The black garnish on the plate? You guessed it! Hay ash!

White fish with elderflower, broad beans, and begoina

Wild duck with nasturtium, watercress, and cowberries or lingonberries
Thinly sliced beet root stuffed with buckwheat become “pierogi”

Our pre-dessert, cherry sorbet with mustard seeds served on a frozen slab
my guess is that the seeds are in a jelly that’s been thinned with water, juice, or wine

While our dessert may look like a pear and we thought it was until we took a spoon to it
it was really more of a pear flavored mousse
The sweet, oat-y crisps underneath were the perfect crunchy contrast
The little jelly at 2:00 on the plate – vodka
and one final appearance from tonight’s novelty, hay ash, in the stem

We finished up the night with tea and coffee, which were accompanied by a small plate of house-made truffles. All in all, a really fun night.

Czerwona Papryka, Poznan, Poland

July 14, 2013 by polishhousewife Leave a Comment

Czerwona Papryka (Red Pepper) is one of two Spanish tapas restaurants in the old square; they’re the one on the east wall. You’ll be greeted by a large black bull in front of the restaurant. We spent 4 years in Spain back in the 80s and have been big fans of Spanish food ever since. Czerwona Papryka does a fine job with tapas, and I was please to see that they offer sangria, not all of Spanish restaurants in Poland or Germany do, and I’ve never understood why.

We’ve shared many of the tapas on the menu: tortilla espanola, gambas con chorizo, bob (fava beans) with choirzo (I wish they had peeled the beans), and paella. We still have a few more to try. We’ve had the same waiter both times that I’ve been there, and the service was very good.

Restauracja Bazar 1838, Poznan, Poland

July 3, 2013 by polishhousewife Leave a Comment

Taking advantage of their patio this time of year

Restauracja Bazar 1838 is named after its historic building and the year construction began. The Bazar Hotel was the center for economic and social life in Poznan when it opened in 1841 – the place for movers and shakers to see and be seen.

We’ve walked by this beautiful restaurant so many times, and we always promise ourselves that the next time we go out for a meal that we will come here. We’ve been saying that for at least 6 months, and we finally remembered! We stopped by here on a Friday night, Noc Kupały actually, and had an early meal before going to the river to watch our fellow Poznanians launch tens of thousands of paper lanterns into the sky.

From the outside, the restaurant looks very posh, very expensive, almost intimidating. Its decor is very nice and the menu very interesting, as Poznan in Your Pocket put it, “looking far pricier from the outside than it actually is.” Once we braved the doorway, we found everyone was sitting on the patio that night. One large table had just stopped by for coffee and dessert, and another was an extended family celebrating a birthday. A young couple came in wearing what seemed to the uniform for young Poznan – a girl dressed to the nines in a very short dress and a guy in tennis shoes, baggy pants and a t-shirt.

I have to give our waiter his own paragraph. The service was fantastic. It was fantastic by American standards. For Poland, it was over the top, worth writing home about. He was personable, attentive without being intrusive, and very knowledgeable about the menu. He was so good that you have to be careful. The young man has mastered the art of selling up – and I don’t mean that in a bad way. He would suggest something with the enthusiasm I would expect if we were guests in his home. I just have to remind myself that these fun recommendations come with a price tag.

We both had starters, a salad for me, a soup for Ed. I had planned on a braised meat (beef, I think), mainly because I was intrigued by the side, carrots cooked with anise and other interesting things. Our waiter strongly urged me to try a steak that may have been the special that night, promising me that it would be much better. My first response was to think, he’s been in the kitchen and must know what he’s talking about, but we’ve been watching a lot of BBC lately with Gordon Ramsey going in to fix restaurants. I can hear Gordon telling the wait staff to push a dish, for reasons other than it’s the best. He’s made me a cynic.

The steak was cut from the tenderloin, one of the few identifiable cuts of beef in Poland. My main dish was OK, nothing memorable. I’ve bought a couple of whole tenderloins in the last couple of months, and I’ve cooked steaks at home that I found more enjoyable. Surprisingly, part of the meat was not particularly tender, and I would have liked more seasoning.

I felt much the same way about my Cesar salad. Here’s a google translation of the description on the menu:

Fresh crispy romaine lettuce with Caesar dressing type (crushed garlic anchovy paste, mixed with egg yolk, Dijon mustard and finely chopped parsley, grated with oil), served with garlic croutons and finished with freshly grated parmesan cheese,
served with: Flambirowanymi brandy grilled shrimp, arugula and pumpkin seed oil

I’ve made Cesar salads at home and that’s just how it should be. The only problem is that the large shavings of Parmesan are the only taste that was identifiable. There was no garlic, no anchovy, no Dijon mustard; the croutons were just crisp bread – no garlic. It wasn’t a bad salad, but I found it lacking. They were kind enough to cook my shrimp well done as I’d requested. I’m sure it bothered the chef, but that’s how I like them, very firm.

While I found this meal on the bland side, Bazar 1838 does have a lot going for it; I’m sure we’ll give them a second chance.

Food Truck Friday, Phoenix Public Market

February 1, 2013 by polishhousewife Leave a Comment


Next time, the guys with smoke coming out of their trailer get my vote for lunch

It was just three years ago, that I wrote about my first experience with a gourmet food truck. The World Fare Bus, a double-decker, pulled up outside a food blogger workshop I was attending in Los Angles. The trend has now arrived in Arizona. Today, my daughter and I hopped on the light rail to downtown Phoenix for Food Truck Friday at the Phoenix Public Market. The Market, which consists of several weekly open air (parking lot) events, is part of a nonprofit that emphasizes eating local, healthy food. On Fridays, from 11 to 1:30, about a dozen food truck are in the parking lot, complete with a DJ from a local radio station.

A large happy crowd on this sunny day

We’ll have to go back. There were still many things that I wanted to try. If the lines of people mean anything, there’s some food worth waiting for from these trucks.

I bought lunch from the vegetarian place today

While my vegetarian cheese crisp was of excellent quality, it was a little bland for my tastes

Lauren’s black bean burger, on the other hand, was spicy and delicious

They had already sold out of many flavors of creme brulee

I loved their “Street food is not a crime” crime scene tape

The pie truck, too, sold out of many flavors

A fun outing, my first time of the Phoenix area’s light rail system

New Mexican Apple Pie, Pie-O-Neer Cafe, Pie Town, New Mexico

October 8, 2012 by polishhousewife Leave a Comment

Decorated with the shape of a green chile, this apple pie boasts the addition of green chile and piñon nuts

My childhood friend lives in Pie Town, NM, population 60, and I now know at least 12 of the welcoming residents of this community. The last time Penny and I saw each other, in the early 1980s, both of our husbands were in the military. If you’d told me that years later I’d find her at the Pie Town RV Park, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m sure she was just as surprised to hear that I’m living in Poland. We had a great visit catching up on our lives and our extended families. My timing was off a bit. I just missed the annual Pie Festival. I understand that on the second Saturday in September, the town of sixty can grow to 1,000 as people come from all over to participate in some small town, Americana fun – a pie baking contest, a pie eating contest, games, music, and BBQ.

The famous Pie-O-Neer Cafe is so busy baking pies to prepare for the event that they close for two weeks after. Lucky for me, Penny had saved a pie for me in her freezer and pulled it out of the oven just after I arrived; now that’s a good friend.

The pie, a New Mexican Apple Pie, incorporates green chile and piñon nuts with the usual ingredients in apple pie filling. If you’re a fan of chile, and I am, you will love this southwestern variety. The heat of the chile cuts through the sweetness making this pie seem perfect, even as an entree. Yes, that’s what I call it when I have pie and only pie for a meal. If you want something different in your apple pie, give this a try.

While I was surprised by this flavor combination, I really must rave the pie’s most memorable feature – the crust. It was light, flaky, and tender – almost like a puff pastry. I aspire to make a crust like this.

Curious about Pie Town? They’re along the Continental Divide and see a lot of bike and foot traffic along that path. It was a strange sensation not to be surrounded by towering mountains as we are in Tucson, the view is different from the top! The area was originally home to many dry pinto bean farmers, but droughts took most of the residents elsewhere. Today, you’ll find a starry night sky, lots of wildlife, a museum that includes an array of windmills, as well as amazing pie.

Restaurant Day

August 28, 2012 by polishhousewife 4 Comments

Have you heard about it? Has Restaurant Day made it to your city? We visited Restaurant Day in Poznan this year, and I can’t wait to join in come November.

I first learned about Restaurant Day in early August when a friend “liked” it on facebook. The name caught my attention and I wanted to investigate. As I recall, Restaurant Day began in Helsinki, Finland a couple of years ago. It has now spread to other cities in other countries. Four times a year, for one day only, anyone who is interested sets up a pop-up restaurant. Selling their favorite creations and selling them at a price that will just cover their food costs.

Not that setting up this kind of restaurant is legal, participants are just ignoring the laws and regulations that restrict such things. . . for one day, kind of like a bake sale. They select a spot, list their location online, and when the day comes, set up a table, and feed passers-by.

I installed the Restaurant Day app for my iPhone, and we set off to visit the pop-ups who had registered for Restaurant Day Poznan on August 19th. First, we visited KontenerART – home to several restaurants. We sampled items from multiple vendors – most were college students who like to cook. None of the restauranteurs we chatted with had ever done this before. They had just learned about it a few weeks before and thought they’d give it a try. Ed sampled gazpacho made by a young woman who had brought 12 kilos of tomatoes from her village – tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, not like the ones they sell in Poznan (her words, not ours). We also tried pastries, lemonade, roasted parsnips chips, and a mango smoothie. The food was fantastic, although the cold things would have been better if they were more chilled. The location was cute, but I didn’t love walking in the deep sand while making the rounds.

Welcome to the picnic

Our next stop was the park in front of the Opera House. There was only one restaurant here, run by four friends who had been up baking all night. They called their pop-up “Picnic.” We sampled their delicious thick crust pizza, lemonade, and a pastry. The day was warm and their location under the trees was perfect. They had two large tables, with an enormous variety of goodies – maybe too many choices.

By this time, we were too full to eat at the final restaurant we saw in the park behind Stary Browar. I suspect these fellows have done this before. A variety of choices, but not too many, and their savory items were not priced individually, there was a set price for their buffet. They had their own DJ and a very professional presentation.

I asked a friend who is the chef/co-owner of the Curious Kumquat in Silver City for his take on Restaurant Day wondering how a professional would feel about it. Rob, being a very generous sort, thought it sounded like great fun. His only reservation was food safety – hoping that the pop-ups would give it as much thought as real restaurants.

Food safety brings me to my final observation. I’ll reveal my American obsessive compulsive disorder here. Many of the items on display were crawling with wasps. This is not unusual. I’ve seen the same in supermarkets and convenience stores. I seem to be the only person bothered by it. And when I try my hand at this come Restaurant Day in November, insects shouldn’t be a problem.

Planning my menu will be fun and easy. Coming up with a suitable November location will require some serious thought. Any ideas?

Auberge de Port Vallieres, Fondettes, France

July 15, 2012 by polishhousewife 1 Comment

On a recent trip to France, our friend, Bill, suggested dinner at a nearby Michelin 1-fork restaurant. He’d eaten there before and knew we would love it. We arrived at Auberge de Port Vallieres at 8:30 PM, and the restaurant continued to fill up as we began our meal. We had such a good time, going through two bottles of the local Chinon wine, that we were the last ones to leave.

We began our evening with a kir royale (casis and champagne) that included a cherry that had marinaded in Cointreau. Our amuse bouche consisted of three different bites: a 3 cm pancake topped with salmon and creme fraiche, a tiny container of seemed like a salsa with fish, and a third item that we can’t remember. The salsa/fish was served with a little plastic fork similar to a plastic gelato spoon. Ed’s only suggestion for the evening would have been using metal flatware rather than plastic.

Ed selected three courses from 33 euro menu:
Foie gras de canard aux fruits sec du mendiant
Filet de boeuf au Chinon et girolles
Abricots roti à l’amaretto, glace lait d’amande

The beef with mushrooms

Roasted apricots with Amaretto and almond ice milk

Bill made the same choices at Ed except for the starter:
Fraicheur de crabe et langoustines au combava

I went with the 28 euro menu:
Cocotte de petits gris et rillons au Vouvray
Filet de carrelet aux mousserons
Sablé aux fraises et rhubarbe

Fabulour fish dish at Auberge de Port Vallieres

Plaice (similar to sole) in a cream sauce with mushrooms

Rhubarb and strawberry shortcake with strawberry ice cream

Bill and Ed finished off our meal with coffee. As Bill pointed out, you always want to have coffee because that brought us the mignardises (little sweets) that accompany it. As part of the coffee service, a rectangle of slate was placed in the middle of the table. On it were three small macarons, three piece of pate de fruits (similar to aplets & cotlets), these had been cut on the diagonal and the resulting triangle stood upright. Leaning against the triangle was a small flat round that contained finely minced figs and nuts laced in caramel with the bottom side dipped in chocolate, so the texture and color of the ingredients was visible on the top.

Everything I ate was delicious. I must especially rave about the sauce on my fish – creamy with a taste of sherry, rich and complex. It was so good that I used bread to mop up every little bit. I left with ideas for new recipes and inspiration on new ways to present my old favorites.

The service was perfect, attentive without being intrusive. The staff spoke English, but Bill, who speaks French, did most of the talking for us. During the two days we spent with him, I never heard him speak English to anyone but us. As someone who lives there part of the year, he’s very conscientious about using and improving his French.

All this, including our many drinks, was about 200 euro for the three of us. As as accountant, I was immediately drawn to a price comparison. Calculated as a price per person, we paid only slightly less than this for two personal size pizzas and two glasses of wine in Paris last year. If we find ourselves back in France, I think we’ll spend our time in the countryside.

Bubble Tea, Quickly Restaurant, Alameda, California

April 13, 2012 by polishhousewife 7 Comments

Our youngest daughter is living in Alameda, California, a quaint, small island community in the San Francisco Bay Area, connected to Oakland by bridges and tunnels. We were out for a walk on the last night of my visit when Rachel asked if I’d ever had bubble tea. When it became obvious that I had no idea what she was talking about, she took me to Quickly, an Asian Fusion Cafe with franchises in Northern California and Nevada.

I was so enthralled with the rose bubble tea she bought me that I went back the next day for another tea, a bit of lunch, and asked if I could video the tea making for this post. The staff were a little surprised by my request, but they graciously complied. The packaging process was as fascinating to me as the black tapioca pearls (bubbles) in my tea. We made the tea video just as their lunch rush began. The restaurant filled up with high school students on their lunch break. I can understand why the kids go there. The food and drink are delicious, perfectly and “quickly” prepared and very affordable.

From what I’ve learned in my research, bubble tea began as a drink for youngsters in Taiwan. It’s popularity has spread globally in Asian communities and now comes in all kinds of flavors, some of which include no actual tea – more like a non-carbonated Italian soda.

The bubbles are large tapioca pearls, kept in a syrup after cooking. In the video, I ask my server about the liquid in which the tapioca is stored. You may not be able to hear her answer; she says that’s honey flavored. The end result is a gummy bear texture and taste.

So here’s a peek at the actual process. We start of with a serving of the bubbles (also known as bobas, remember my fascination with the filled, popping bobas at the yogurt shop?), rose syrup, ice, cold water, and then the top of the cup is sealed. You drink bubble tea with a special straw. It has a pointed end to pop through the sealed lid and is big enough to allow the blueberry sized tapioca to travel up the straw. So tasty and so much fun!

My food was great too:

I couldn’t pass up the shrimp, something we don’t find in Poland

I believe the sesame balls are a white sweet potato dough with a dab of black bean in the center. At the WOOK restaurants in Poland, these are served with a drizzle of caramel sauce for dessert

Hegetova Cihelna, Prague, Czech Republic

July 9, 2011 by polishhousewife 7 Comments

A little road trip and we were able to join friends from Tucson in Prague as they begin a tour of Eastern Europe with a community orchestra. They looked really good for folks who just traversed the Atlantic as we dined at Hegetova Cihelna.

Next to the Franz Kafka Museum on Kampa Island in the Vltava River, Hegetova Cihelna comes highly recommended by friends who have visited Prague and the front desk staff at our hotel. This was our first trip to Prague, and we couldn’t have had a better finish to the day – sitting along the river watching the boats go by, enjoying a fantastic meal.

Our city exploration included a river tour. As our boat passed Kampa Island, our tour guide pointed out the Kafka Museum. He mentioned that this was an unusual place to locate the museum. The building used to be a brick factory (producing many of the bricks used to construct the neighboring buildings) and the well known novelist from Prague never lived in that part of the city. This is all making sense now. The name of the restaurant means Herget’s Brickworks in English.

As our tour boat went by, we were wondering if this was where we would be dining. It was and the view is even better from the other side of the wall.

Ed and I began the meal with bouillabaisse which led to the request, “let’s make this at home.”

For my main course, linguine with parmesean and black truffle – wonderful flavor, but more pasta than I could eat.

Ed had a fillet, excellent beefy flavor. We don’t get much beef in Poland.

Our friends Alice and Dennis had the rack of lamb and the duck. Both were big hits. The service was subtle and attentive. Flatware was replaced for the next course in a stealth like manner.

Hegetova Cihelna

Three of us had this chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate with candied orange peel for dessert. Ed, however, chose the tiramisu.

How’s that for presentation? Is the spun sugar giving anyone Saint Honore Trifle flashbacks? I’m sure there are a lot of wonderful restaurants in Prague, but you can’t go wrong with Hegetova Cihelna!

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