Sichuan Gourmet: A Spicy Cuisine, with Depth of Flavor

What you’ve heard about Sichuan cuisine is true: it can bring the heat.

I’m no stranger to a bit of spice, either in restaurants or in my own cooking (and yes, I’ve eaten many a hot pepper on a double-dog-dare).  But what I love about good Sichuan food, and about Sichuan Gourmet on Beacon Street, is the depth of flavor that’s evident alongside the spice.  Here you’ll find a chorus of tastes—ginger, sesame oil, garlic, chili, and Sichuan peppercorns singing in harmony together, in nuances that reach far beyond the mere marker of “spicy.”

Take the Xiang La Twin Lobster as an example; sure, it might make your tongue tingle, but there’s also notes of a savory blend similar to five-spice powder, and the fruitiness of Sichuan peppercorns.  Or take the Cheng Du Spicy Dumplings, filled with succulent pork, and slippery with a sauce that’s sweet and dark and full of fire.  A mound of crushed raw garlic on top adds a pungent sharpness, for a different kind of spice.
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Sofra

Sweet Cheese Brioche with blueberries,
orange blossom lemonade,
Sour Cream Donut with cocoa nibs

I have a real yen for small plates.  Tapas, mezze, antipasti, appetizers, you name it.  It's not that I can't make up my mind, or that I get bored with full-size dishes―I just feel the craving to taste as many recipes and flavors as I can.  No stone left unturned, no dish left untasted!

That's why I swooned when I saw the mezze bar at Sofra.

Bites Nearby: Back-to-School Special

Ease back into your studying groove with pizza, subs, wings, and more

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crostini with ricotta, honey, and lavender

There aren't a lot of naturally purple foods out there.  Grapes, plums, olives, a few berries, a couple of vegetables, a couple of grains.  Barring kool-aid and that one short-lived purple ketchup, that's pretty much it.  And trust me, I never thought I'd be on here lamenting the lack of purple foods in the world.  But that was before Heidi's bridal shower.

My dear friend Heidi's love of purple verges on obsession.  Purple sheets, purple towels, purple notebooks, a purple potato scrubber.  I'm sure that if she could, she would dye her fiance Bill's beard purple.  So naturally, the theme of her bridal shower was "purple."  

La Morra: Flavors of Tuscany, from a Wood-Fired Grill

Brookline Village spot delivers some hits, a couple of misses, and one stupendous dessert
La Morra, it seems, is the little restaurant that could, back on its feet now after a kitchen fire in early March closed the place for several months.  The Tuscan-style dishes, particularly those prepared on the restaurant’s wood-fired grill, are an appetizing homage to the time owners Jen and Josh Ziskin spent in Italy, and the chic bar and trendy exposed-brick interior can almost make you forget you’re staring straight out the window at Route 9.

Stop in for a drink and you’ll find a parade of characters at the bar, where the colorful cocktails remind me of little society ladies, each with their own flair.  Tall, slim Violette is a vision in lavender, a mix of Hendrick’s gin and crème de violet draped in a yellow scarf of lemon peel; Ras’rita is a plump and jolly grande dame in a gown of deep pink raspberry and tequila, with thick wedges of lemon and lime plunked on the rim of the glass like two chunky rings of gold and emerald.  She’s loud where Violette is quiet, cloying where Violette is subtle, but they’re both a good time in their own way.
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Otto Pizza

It's T minus two days until we move from our squalid little sublet and into a cozy new apartment with two (count 'em, two) decks and a working fireplace, and a marvelous kitchen that I cannot wait to christen. But as much as I'm looking forward to moving back across the river, I'll miss Cambridge's quirky atmosphere. (A few weeks ago—and I swear this is true—I saw a Buddhist monk going into an Urban Outfitters.) I'll miss walking through Harvard Yard every morning on my way to work, and I'll miss living within walking distance of Otto Pizza.

Otto started in Portland, Maine, but they have a recently-opened location in Cambridge.

I can't believe that we went nearly the entire summer without the utter deliciousness that is Otto Pizza. It's a tiny (and I do mean tiny) little place in Harvard Square, which I must have passed, oh, about a bajillion times without even noticing. But I've been craving pizza like a fiend lately, so last week we gave their Three-Cheese Tortellini pizza a try, and people, it was stupendous. We gobbled the entire thing up in probably twenty minutes, and the next day I had to physically restrain myself from going to get another one.

This is their Apple, Bacon, and Red Onion pizza. It's also quite good, but honestly, I fell in love with the amazing fresh red sauce on that tortellini pizza. I can't wait to go back and try more of their genius toppings, like Butternut Squash+Ricotta+Cranberry, or Pulled Pork+Mango, or Mashed Potato+Bacon+Scallion.

I've already Google-Mapped the route between Otto and our future apartment. It's 18 minutes, and on a toll road to boot. But don't think that'll stop me.

hurricane lunch

We're spending today inside, since the Eastern seaboard decided that yes, this whole earthquake-and-hurricane-in-one-week thing sounded pretty good. There are books to catch up on, and tea to drink, and writing to finish, for which I hope I won't have to whip out our trusty flashlight.

There's also a cat to cuddle. Actually, I'm beginning to think that she's actually a dog-in-cat's-clothing, from the way she begs when she sees anything even remotely edible in our hands. That, and she never passes up a good belly rub.

On rainy, windy days like this, I make probably a dozen trips into the kitchen, looking for a mug of something hot or a satisfying snack. These thick slices of heirloom tomato, resting on a baguette slathered with homemade pesto, fell somewhere between third breakfast and first dinner, so I suppose one might call them lunch. Our hurricane lunch. The "just in case" cans of soup that we bought for today are staring mournfully at me from the kitchen table, but hurricane or no, who am I to resist a beautiful heirloom tomato at the end of August?