A Weekend of Celebratory Desserts

I had a really fun birthday party the other weekend! Not surprisingly, I enjoyed a few desserts in the hours preceding it.

A cliff-diving event at the ICA – where, yes, people voluntarily plunged nearly 100 feet off the museum into Boston Harbor!?! – brought Greg, Rob, and me to Boston's Fort Point neighborhood. We had to eat lunch at my favorite outpost of Flour Bakery prior! I departed from usual Flour protocol this time, eschewing my tried-and-true favorites and ordering two untested items. Their BLT sandwich was truly exemplary, and will become part of my regular sandwich rotation. The purest joy, however, came with a new dessert offering! I hereby introduce you to Flour's Congo bar. Here is its richly textured surface…

…and here is the glory that lies beneath.

The bar’s rather thick base is a brown sugar cookie thoroughly marbled with pastry chocolate. A thinner layer of the same chocolate, mixed with caramel and coconut flakes, covers the cookie base. Then, the treat is covered in more coconut flakes and topped off with a few caramel drizzles. This was a very sturdy, dense, rich dessert. However, each bite melted into creamy, sweet goodness soon after I took it.  Just think – a warm, buttery cookie; fudgy, fragrant chocolate; fluffy, sweet coconut; and milky, silky caramel, all mixed and layered together to create one ultimate dessert. Wow! I’ll surely be scanning Flour’s displays for this whopper of a treat in the future.

(You shouldn’t be surprised that I loved the Congo bar, since my weakness for robust layered cookie bars has already been documented. Speaking of which, I was in Belfast the other week…and had two Caramelitas. That’s right. Two.)

Party time was upon us before we knew it, so we hastily traveled back to Cambridge and considered Inman Square “dinner” options. I put the word dinner in quotes because Christina’s Ice Cream shouldn’t have fit the bill, but I guess one is allowed to get away with extraordinary indulgences on one’s birthday. Look at this most delicious of sundaes!

Coffee oreo ice cream, with an honest, unsweetened coffee flavor and large oreo chunks? Check. Peanut butter chip ice cream, with a similarly natural, nutty base flavor and tasty chocolate pieces? Check. Crushed peanut butter cup topping, made of candies that put Reese’s to shame? Check. Homemade hot fudge and whipped cream, both of which make you rethink all notions of what these toppings should be, in the best way? Check. The resulting amalgamation gave me all the energy I needed to dance the night away. And boy, did I dance :-)

But wait – there’s more!

Linda and I spent the following day putzing around Harvard Square. We dropped by Sweet for a cupcake later that afternoon. I enjoyed the Red, White, and You cupcake, which I first tried two years ago! It’s a vanilla bean cupcake injected with mixed berry jam, topped with a towering dollop of vanilla buttercream frosting, and garnished with an avalanche of crunchy red sugar. It’s still rather delicious, though the frosting was significantly lighter than I remember; they must be whipping it nowadays?

Lastly, here’s a huge shout-out to my wonderful friends, who made my birthday so special! Y’all are amazing. :-)

Summer Restaurant Week 2011

With another Restaurant Week period over, I can cross two long-standing entries off my restaurant list! Both dinners piqued my curiosity, while serving tasty but not overly memorable food. The same goes for the desserts – they were good enough, but not rave-worthy.

Adam and I finally tried Toro, Ken Oringer’s trendy tapas bistro in the South End. It was a beautiful, balmy Boston night, so we sat on Toro’s sidewalk patio and enjoyed the relative quiet compared to the din within the brick-and-steel dining room and attached visible kitchen. How do RW’s three courses get figured out at a small-plates restaurant? It turns out that each person picks an appetizer; then, the table gets a certain number of tapas by occupancy (5 dishes, in the case of two people); and lastly, we each choose a dessert. I had an appetizer of tuna tartare garnished with cilantro, which had an excellent taste but an unusually chewy texture. Our tapas were:

• Jamon serrano – the ham was a bit fattier than I like, and cured for less time. I was not impressed with this most favored of tapas.
• Patatas bravas – the dish I always order when trying a new tapas place! Toro’s sauce is probably the spiciest I have yet encountered on this dish, and the large potato pieces were grilled to perfection.
• Uni sandwich – I totally forgot that this fishy-tasting paste was actually sea urchin. It was tasty enough, and represented our most unusual order. Sadly enough, Toro was out of the octopus!
• Garlic shrimp – some of the largest shrimp I’ve ever seen, sautéed with garlic. I wish there had been more than two per person.
• Short rib – delectable, flaky beef in a red wine sauce. My sudden appetite for red meat continues to surprise me this summer!

Dessert came next. I had a churro dusted in a copious amount of cinnamon sugar, with a side of Mexican chocolate sauce for dipping. The doughnut stick was chewy and warm, with a faint vanilla flavor. I love how the dusting’s sugar crystals added a bit of grit and crunch to the otherwise soft dessert. I also liked the balance of flavors in the Mexican chocolate; neither too bitter nor too spicy, it was just enough of a contrast to the sweet pastry. Still, a churro is a fairly typical dessert at Spanish and Mexican eateries, so I would have rather been intrigued by a different – even if less delicious – option. Well, maybe I should take that back; Adam was underwhelmed with the Manchego cheese.

I would go back to Toro if the opportunity presented itself. Eating in the bustling dining room would be a lot of fun, as would trying the more atypical offerings on their standard menu.

Katie and I continued the Restaurant Week fun at Gaslight the following week. This cheerful, flame-lit French brasserie is owned by the same group as Aquitaine, a restaurant that has never disappointed – so, we knew the grub would be good. We somehow found opportunities to chew our food amid a few hours of rapid-fire catching up. :-) My appetizer was a field greens salad tossed in hazelnut vinaigrette, with chunks of fried Brie. The Brie was delicious as per usual, and I enjoyed the dressing’s subtle nuttiness; I would have preferred fewer bitter greens in the salad, though! I ordered trout almondine with beans and potatoes for dinner. The trout was pleasantly pink and flaky, with that freshwater fish taste I so love, but I was surprised at how thin the fillets were; I had seemingly equal parts meat and skin. The sliced almonds were a really great addition, as were the soft and savory vegetables.

I ignored my usual chocolate craving when it was time for dessert, opting instead for a strawberry layer cake with strawberry ice cream! I enjoyed this sweet and delicate cake. Its texture reminded me of genoise, but its crumb was a bit larger than that sponge cake. It had three layers, which were separated by mashed strawberries. (I appreciate that Gaslight uses fresh fruit, as opposed to the frozen slop you often see in, say, custard cups!) The thin layer of tart frosting on top used crème fraiche – so, this sugary treat got an unusual but welcome infusion of sourness – and was garnished with more strawberries. As if all those components were not enough, I got a scoop of strawberry ice cream on the side! It was more creamy than fruity. I chose to let most of it melt, so I could dip each forkful of (rather dry) cake in the resulting “soup”. Yum! Katie reports that the flourless chocolate truffle cake with espresso ice cream was also yum-worthy.

I would go back to Gaslight, too, though a different cuisine may win out if I were given options. This RW meal was mostly a hit, but I sometimes miss entirely with French food.

Now, about that restaurant list…

Weekend Wontons

Here's a dilemma. It's 9:30PM on a Sunday. You last ate at 3:30PM, enjoying a later Friendly Toast brunch of monstrous chocolate-toffee pancakes, or a breakfast burrito with homefries. What are you going to make for dinner?

As I found out this past weekend, the correct answer is...wontons! Berry, chocolate, and bacon wontons, to be exact. It was a good answer. These dessert-like interpretations of the savory Asian appetizer are really easy to make, and they're tasty to boot! Here are the ingredients and process.

• wonton "skin" / wrappers
• frozen mixed berries (fresh berries risk turning into mush during the frying process)
• chocolate chips
• bacon, cooked
• canola oil
• powdered sugar (optional)

1. Lay out a wonton skin. Rub its edges with water.
2. Put a small amount of frozen fruit, chocolate chips, and/or bacon crumbles in the middle of the skin (for square wontons) or slightly toward one corner (for triangular/trapezoidal ones). I made berry chocolate or bacon chocolate wontons; never did the berries and bacon mix.
3. Fold the wonton skin over the filling onto itself, and press the wet edges against each other to form a seal.
4. Fold the sealed parts together, and press them securely. This extra step will help secure against breaking and bursting during the frying process.
5. Experiment with shapes and sizes! Multiple wrappers can be secured together, etc.
6. Heat approximately 1.5 inches of oil in a saucepan.
7. Drop the wontons in the hot oil, and fry them until done.
8. Remove the wontons from the hot oil, and let them cool to an edible, yet warm, temperature.
9. Dust with powdered sugar, if desired.
10. Enjoy!

Behold, our happy little confections! You bite through the crunchy outer shell, with its characteristic taste of oil and salt, and are met with a burst of warm fruit filling and melted chocolate. I was surprised at how much air snuck into the wontons, since they were folded rather tightly; this also disappointed me a little, because then I imagined the air space being filled with that much more gooey chocolate. Alas. Maybe the solution will be to stuff them more next time? The bacon chocolate wontons were also great, though obviously less gushy. If I make that variety again, I'll cook the bacon for less time. Chewier bacon may be a better complement to a crunchy shell than crunchy bacon. Either way, the salty sweetness was great.

It could be fun to start a series on dessert versions of traditionally savory foods. Heck, I'll even create a special tag for such posts. Anyone have suggestions to that end?