shrimp and avocado fresh spring rolls with spicy peanut sauce

The best thing about our summer apartment in Cambridge, in the bright blue house with the bright purple door, is that we have a new roommate. Meet Seng. 

I have to say that if I were a cat, I would be Seng, unquestionably. We both use our free time for lounging; we both like to be the little spoon; we both get cranky when we’re hungry. I've also heard that we both do the same huffing-puffing thing with our breath when we sleep. 

But what really solidifies my affinity with this little cat is that she shares my consummate love of all things edible. It makes no difference what she finds: potato chips, olives, salad dressing, once even a hunk of moldy cheese (please don’t report me to PETA). She’ll climb up onto the kitchen table to lap up the leftover spoonful of milk in our cereal bowls. When we scold her, she’ll plunk herself down and then strategically roll over, playing off her adorableness, to get her face as close as possible to the forbidden mana just in case we look away and she can sneak a mouthful.

Rami's: Exceptional Israeli Cuisine

Brookline is a town that knows what it likes. Restaurants with good food win loyal regulars in a flash; those with not-so-good food usually end up relocating. So when you find a restaurant that has flourished in Coolidge Corner since 1990, with only a few tables and a very unremarkable exterior, you can be sure that it’s doing something right.

At Rami’s, the cuisine is Sephardic Israeli, and the menu is exactly what you might expect: hummus, falafel, Israeli salad, beef kebabs, and the grilled eggplant spread baba ganoush. There’s chicken grilled with onions, and turkey shawarma—marinated meat layered onto a spit and slow-cooked, rotisserie-style.

But within the expected comes the unexpected—the tastes and textures that whisper, this is how I’m really supposed to taste. The hummus is velvety, nutty, and heavy on the tahini. It’s made fresh, in-house, three times each day. The falafel are golden orbs of ground chickpeas and spice, deep-fried for a crisp crust, but fork one open and the interior will steam with moisture. The delicate little morsels of baklava gleam with honey and nuts. The Israeli salad is a beautiful jumble of color, the cucumbers, red cabbage, and tomatoes, shining under a layer of tart, spicy pickles and tahini dressing.Read the full review at the Brookline Patch...

MJ Ready: Thai Food Shines In a Puzzling Menu

A bit of innocuous "recipient design" seems to be a trend among some restaurants these days—an alteration of menu, message, or service based on the intended customer. It’s a gentle, bright-eyed version of “give the people what they want,” a noncommittal way to cast the widest net possible. But it can also confuse customers. Is the restaurant Chinese or Korean? Cuban or Mexican?

Or, as is the case with MJ Ready: Thai or Italian-American? If I ever feel like some Fettuccine Alfredo or corned beef hash alongside my steaming bowl of Tom Kha Gai, I guess I now know where to go.

Read the full review at the Brookline Patch...

August 6th: National Mustard Day!

My friend Molly has convinced me that everybody needs a little mustard in life. Especially during summer, the season of cookouts! and hot dogs! And people, in case you didn’t know, there are so many other choices than Dijon and French’s yellow. Mustards that boggle the mind, like chocolate mustard and root beer mustard and curry mustard.

To me, mustard is the King of Condiments. I've always loved mustard more than ketchup, and (slightly) more than relish. I'm imagining that mustard above, the whole-grain mustard with Guinness, slathered on a thick sausage in a pillowy Portuguese roll.

Can you believe there's a National Mustard Museum? And can you believe that It was less than half an hour from the house where I grew up, and I never knew? They’re celebrating National Mustard Day on August 6th—and there’ll be mustard samples, and mustard games {whatever those are} and even a frozen mustard custard.

(Yes, that's Merlot and Chocolate in that picture. It's a little sweet, not too spicy, and very round. And the museum published a recipe for chocolate-mustard brownies that I must make, post-haste.)

Happy National Mustard Day!

Greek-style bulgur salad

When Merrick and I agreed to sublet a tiny apartment in Cambridge for the summer, we had no idea what we were in for.

By some cosmic hilarity, our apartment (to which I will ironically refer as “shabby-chic”) was already totally furnished before we moved in, leaving no reasonable place for our own boxes. And, because we’re moving again in September, my current mentality can be loosely summarized as, “Why bother unpacking?” 

 The living room is dominated by boxes, while in the bedroom, messy suitcases have entirely taken over the floor like mold takes over cheese—at a creeping but determined pace, until suddenly you look up and realize that the mold has won. There is a good possibility that I will abandon all hope of ever finding appropriate clothes to wear to work and just start showing up in a bathrobe. 

 There is an equally good chance that I will eighty-six all of my cooking plans and we will just live on Indian take-out from the place down the street. Especially since only two of the burners on our stove work. And especially because when I use those burners, the kitchen heats up to roughly two hundred degrees.

Eatable Madison

I grew up in Wisconsin, the land of closed vowels and stretched words (as in, ooooh, suuuure, which you hear frequently there, as everyone is naturally accomodating). It's curious to turn a stranger's eye upon the place where I grew up; I find myself asking silent questions like was that always there? And I'm starting to see other sides of Madison, like the meant-for-tourists side, and the legal-drinking-age side, and the this-town-is-actually-pretty-cool side, all of which were hidden to me during my earlier years.

Village Fare Pizza: One-Stop Picnic Shop in Brookline

This review originally published July 21, 2011 at The Brookline Patch

Margherita Pizza

It’s summer, which means I’m constantly on the lookout for picnic-ready bites nearby. Depending on my mood, that might mean pizza, subs, salads, wings, or wraps. (And ice cream—that’s the one non-negotiable item.)

It’s convenient, then, that Village Fare Pizza in Brookline has all of that, and more. The food is mostly your standard diner-style grub, but it’s certainly picnic-worthy, and the price is right.

Village Fare isn’t really the kind of place you want to spend much time in—the hard plastic booths and TV blasting "Days of Our Lives" on near-full volume make for a less-than-welcoming setting—but the takeout options are endless. The pizza is noteworthy: not too greasy, with choice toppings piled high onto a crust that’s crispy but rather floury and tasteless. Our Chicken Pesto Supreme ($9.99 for small) was satisfying; though we couldn't taste the pesto at all, the pizza was loaded with chicken, roasted sweet red pepper, and onion.  The Margherita ($9.99 for small) isn't the traditional combo of tomato, mozzarella, and basil, but instead spinach, tomato, ham, and mozzarella over a base of garlic and olive oil. Unexpected, yes, but certainly delicious.

Chicken Pesto Supreme

Sub sandwiches range from the straightforward to the more intriguing: ham and egg, chicken teriyaki, and BBQ bacon burger. Our Italian sub ($5.25 for small) was stuffed with good-quality meats and cheese, and dressed with a pleasantly spicy vinaigrette. A meatball sub ($5.25 for small) was a standard affair, tasty and with just the right amount of sauce.

Gyro Plate

Other choices for your picnic are wraps like the grilled chicken Caesar ($6.15) and the steak and cheese ($6.35), or salads like the Greek salad ($6.25).  Chicken wings ($5.99 for 8) are easily packed in a picnic basket, and here they're nicely crisped and spicy.

Dinner plates arrive with oversalted fries and a fairly fresh green salad crowned with a few vegetables and feta cheese. The Gyro Plate ($8.25), featuring previously-frozen gyro meat is slathered with a mild Tzatziki yogurt sauce and wrapped into a soft pita, along with anemic tomatoes and shredded lettuce, is not the Village Fare’s best work. Dinners are mostly safe and kid-friendly options, like chicken fingers ($8.95), lasagna ($7.75), and a cheeseburger ($6.95).

What’s a picnic without dessert? There’s a standing freezer full of my requisite ice cream treats ($1.75), as well as packaged cookies, brownies, whoopee pies, and squares of baklava ($1.75 each).  Sneak a few into your basket, and don’t forget the Frisbee.

Village Fare Pizza is open Monday through Thursday 10am-10pm, Friday and Saturday 10am-11pm, and Sunday noon-10pm.  387 Washington Street, Brookline. MBTA: Green Line (D) to Brookline Village.