Pupatella Neapolitan Food Cart, Arlington, VA

This week, before the Bourdain talk, since I had part of my day off, I grabbed lunch at the Pupatella Neapolitan food cart located outside the Ballston Metro station in Arlington, VA. I had heard about them through Don Rockwell and had been planning to try it out for some time.
I started with the stuffed rice balls- they are stuffed with faux beef, veggies and smoked mozarella and then deep fried. Very tasty.
I followed it with a deep fried calzone- this is they way they make it in Naples- not baked. It was filled with ham, ricotta, mozarella, and tomato sauce. I think I would actually prefer calzones if they were deep fried like this all the time.
For dessert, I had a Nutella pizza topped with pears- also delicious.

Anthony Bourdain at Lisner Auditorium

So last night, Anthony Bourdain, the inspiration for our food blog, gave a talk at Lisner Auditorium in DC. He's out promoting a new book, No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach a compilation of pictures and notes from his Travel Channel program of the same name.
His talk was funny, crass, and opinionated- all I come to expect of the man. He showed a few clips from his show: the one when he goes with his office manager to make Kim Chee, when he goes to Brazil to eat and drink all day at a lady's home, and the segment with the bamboo pole noodle maker in Hong Kong.
A few interesting points- he's quit smoking! Probably because he's just had a daughter. He noted his wife, from northern Italy, imports Italian baby food with flavors like prosciutto and parmesan.

He said the most disgusting dish he ever had was in Iceland- it was a shark fermented in it's own urine, then fermented again in lactic acid for a few months. This was worse than the uncleaned warthog intestine he had in Africa.
He said the best pork he had was in Bali. Puerto Rico was in second place
He said he has not yet crossed the food line of dogs and cats, and wasn't sure if he could take that step.
When asked where he would stop and stay forever, he mentioned his love for Vietnam and it's food and lifestyle.
He confirmed that he had Ben's Chili Bowl the night before and loved it.

He did not hesitate to deride vegetarians, the Food Channel, and Rachael Ray.
If asked who he would battle on Iron Chef. he said, "Who's Cat Cora? She has a SAG card. What chef has a SAG card?" He figured they would give him something he hated like Tofu or Veggie burgers as the challenge.
He mentioned that Hung was indeed hands down the best one on Top Chef this season. He expressed a fondness for Nigella Lawson after she described to him a night in Spain where they aborted a pig and roasted the fetus for her to eat.

He said his favorite food movie moment was the revelatory scene in Ratatouille. He also liked Eat Drink Man Woman.
His dream meal is the sushi by Masa Takayama, his fav Ramones song: "Beat on a Brat". He confessed to liking KFC's mac & cheese.

Towards to end of the talk, he discouraged an audience member who wanted to change his career and become a chef. He said it was for the young- too much humiliation and too little reward. He recalled his days in the kitchen watching the spirit of aspiring culinary school grads die. He said that the reason Mexicans are good in the kitchen is that they expect life to suck, so the hardship of the restaurant business is not so bad.

Chaps Pit Beef

We in Baltimore love a good pit beef sandwich. I headed over the Chaps Pit Beef, touted as Baltimore's best in the City Paper for a pit beef sandwich. The place is located next to a gentleman's club.
The options for the beef are medium and medium well- I got a medium on a nice sized kaiser roll. I added some horseradish and onion. It was a nice sandwich- good sized, nice flavor.
In the end, I still prefer Canopy because you can get the meat cooked rare- nothing like a pink bloody bun, but since Canopy is in Ellicott City, I would agree Chaps is Baltimore's best.

Chaps Pit Beef
5801 Pulaski Highway
Baltimore, MD 21205

The Canopy
9319 Baltimore National Pike
Ellicott City, MD 21042

Ravioli & Meatballs from St. Leo Church Benefit

After reading an article in the Sun paper, Bigfatlar, kwan and I went to the St. Leo Roman Catholic Church biannual benefit dinner in Baltimore's Little Italy for a meal of homemade meatballs and ravioli. While not quite worth the 2 hour wait, the slightly spicy apricot sized meatballs were delicious as was the tangy sauce. I was a little mixed about the homemade ravioli- some of the edges were a little tough.

Girls Cooking Night: Pumpkin

For our most recent girls cooking night, we went seasonal with an all-pumpkin feast. The most interesting thing was that given pumpkin's squashy-absorbent nature, all five dishes had very distinctive flavors.

I steamed sticky rice in the pumpkin. I made the sticky rice first, then mixed it with stir-fried diced shitake mushrooms, dried shrimp, green onions, shallots, and since I don't like Chinese sausage, sweet Lebanon bologna, mixed with sesame oil and a little soy sauce. I stuffed the rice mixture in the pumpkin and steamed the whole thing for about an hour. I think it could have gone quite a bit longer to soften the pumpkin flesh even more, but well we had plenty of pumpkin to eat that night.

We started with Debbie's pumpkin lentil soup. The yellow lentils were still a little crunchy -- toothsome, as brownie likes to say. The yogurt added a nice tang.




Melissa made a wonderful rich pumpkin beef curry -- great flavor, lots of kick.

Kim made a pumpkin risotto, yet another totally distinct flavor. With lots of butter and rosemary and thyme or tarragon, someone said it reminded them of Thanksgiving.


Brownie finished us off with a delicious pumpkin cheesecake. I don't even like cheesecake, but this one was really tasty, especially with its gingersnap crust.

Finally, Marian couldn't make it that night, but on a previous occasion, she had wowed us with a nice, creamy, and fluffy pumpkin souffle.

Amish Country, PA

We took a trip to Lancaster, PA this weekend, and sampled many great Amish delights. First stop was the Bird-in-Hand Farmers Market, where the meat at Hummer's looked so good, we actually went and bought a cooler to take stuff home: scrapple, bacon, Canadian bacon, and sweet Lebanon bologna. We sampled all sorts of other goodies at other market stands like pickles, relishes, jams, pretzels, cinnamon bread, pecan sticky buns and more.




On the side of the road, we saw a sign for homemade root beer, and had to pull in. Down a long drive to a farm where in addition to root beer, they sold whoopie pies and homemade potato chips. The root beer was lightly carbonated and strong and rooty.



The next roadside stand we stopped at was Zook's, home of famous chicken pies. We bought 2 frozen ones, but haven't baked them and tried them out yet. We also stopped at the Kitchen Kettle Village in Intercourse, PA, but it was way too crowded with tourists. Much better was the Intercourse Canning company, where we ate our fill of more pickles, jams, and relishes.

Dinner was at Stoltzfus Farm Restaurant, an all-you-can-eat Amish family-style meal. Starters included chow-chow, applesauce, bread with apple butter, and pickled cabbage. Then the main courses came -- meats included fried chicken, homemade sausage, and Stoltzfus's own homemade ham loaf. The ham loaf was really good - imagine the meatloaf concept, but made with ground ham instead.


The sides included: yams, corn, green beans, buttered noodles, and potato filling. This was my favorite - it was like stuffing but made with potatoes mixed with bread and herbs. It was light and fluffy but deceptively so, as about 20 minutes later all that starch expanded in my gut...

I didn't really have room for dessert, though it was included. 1000yregg got cherry crumb pie, redneckhunter got apple, and I ordered the shoo-fly pie. I love this stuff -- leave it to the Amish to create a pie made entirely of sugar: gooey molasses topped with brown sugar crumb topping. With no other vices but food, you can't blame them for their love of meat, starch, butter and sugar.

Bird-in-Hand Farmer's Market
2710 Old Philadelphia Pike

Stoltzfus Farm Restaurant
Route 772, Intercourse, PA

Octuberfest X

This past weekend, I went to visit a friend, ol_ironstomach for his annual Octuberfest party. The theme- tubers, tubers, tubers.
This presented a wide variety of interesting dishes. First off, despite being off the theme, the hosts had a 1 year aged ham they brought back from a recent trip to Kentucky.
I brought Fougoo/Redneckhunter's White Trasherole as my dish. I actually won favorite of the night.
There was Jicama salad, odd potatoes wrapped in salmon, a delicious pork pie, potato kugel, potato croquettes, empanadas, and a sweet potato with sausage casserole.

There was also an interesting variety of desserts - sweet potato pie with and without walnuts, nice strong gingerbread cookies, ginger bread, a nice sweet potato flan, and tapioca pudding. One person made chocolates with butter cream- the tuber was in potato used in the butter cream- they diappeared quickly.

This was a tasty batch of Vegetable Samosas from a Northern Virginia place- they even added little chile flecks in the potato inside.

These were french pastries stuffed with mashed potato and bacon.

Hands down, my favorite dish was the Lancashire Hotpot- slow cooked in a large pot- it consisted of lamb on the bone, some lamb kidney, onion, seasoning, stock, and a layer of potatoes sliced thin on top. Wow, the flavor, then tendon, the moistness.

Lunch at Soba-ya, NYC

Fougoo, Redneckhunter, our friend Melinda, and I met up for lunch in the East Village at the Japanese restaurant Soba-ya over the weekend. The place is known for it's homemade buckwheat soba noodles made on the premises.
We started with an appetizer of Uni Tororo- sea urchin with Japanese yam. The urchin was fresh, and went well with the stickiness of the yam.

Soba-ya offers pretty amazing lunch specials, all accompanied by a plate of fresh soba noodles. Redneckhunter got the hot lunch special that included tempura, a piece of salmon, and some nice vegetables including lotus and burdock.
Melinda got the Maguro Don rice bowl - the tuna was really nice a fresh.

I ordered the Sake Oyako Don rice bowl- with salmon and salmon roe. Fougoo got the Sakuraebi Seiro soba bowl which was topped with tiny shrimp and mitsuba leaf tempura.

For dessert, Redneckhunter got a serving of sweet milk tofu with strawberry. The rest of us shared a trio of ice creams also made at the restaurant.

They were black sesame, honey wasabi, and yuzu (Japanese citrus). The black sesame was like oreo cookie, the yuzu had an orange peel like flavor, and the wasabi- was interesting.

Soba-ya
229 E 9th St Ste 3
New York, NY 10003-7536
Phone: (212) 533-6966