Sometimes Dining in Baltimore

A few months ago, a friend of mine in town told me about Sometimes Dining, kind of an underground dining group in the Waverly neighborhood in Baltimore.
Since their dinners are at an actual residence, spaces are limited, but luckily last week, I was able to score a seat for their Pi day dinner.
We showed up at the house around 7:30pm, and were immediately welcomed by the staff and chefs when we entered the house. We were instructed to sit where we could, and we were lucky to get seats at a large table in the kitchen area.
Everyone was very friendly at our table which consisted a mix of newbies like ourselves and friends of the people who were running things. They were BYOB, but they did include suggested wine pairings in our confirmation emails.
We started with some homemade rye bread that had a fantastic crust served with alder smoked honey butter.

Our first course was a beautifully set salad with broccoli stalked shaved in thin strips topped with fresh beets, cashews, and Unikass cheese (which was like a hard cheddar).
In between courses they served a drink of warm black tea, root beer and ginger.
The second course was homemade cinnamon noodles with a mushroom reduction, served with duck breast with a red onion, grapefruit confit. I really enjoyed how all the flavors were actually very subtle and fit together nicely.
The third course was "le trou normand", or "palate cleanser": a shot of clove infused vodka. At this point, the chefs came out and toasted their guests.
We also got small plates of pickled asparagus and roasted pistachios.
The fourth course was a wonderfully poached hake served wrapped in a scallion crepe with a frisee salad and topped with a poached egg. The whole dish was delicately prepared and delicious.



As the dishes were cleared for dessert, I ordered a really nice and strong cappuccino made with Baltimore based Bluebird coffee.
The last dish was an apple compote with a sage shortbread cookie with some creme anglais.
They finished us off with some homemade dark chocolates.
The whole Sometimes Dining experience was just so warm and intimate and with such wonderful and thoughtfully prepared food and drink, it is a true treasure in Baltimore's food scene.

Wisconsin Boys Weekend 2009 Part 1 - Sausage and Booze

So Fougoo has her monthly girls cooking nights known on this blog, but every year, I have an annual Boys Weekend in Wisconsin where we share food, drink and good times.
This year's trip was the most "foodie" we've ever had. This year, our host Thayer has been really taking Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie book as inspiration to, first off, making homemade Italian and Hungarian sausages. They were incredible, fresh, and juicy. There is nothing like the snap of natural casings.
He also cured his own Lox, using a nice amount of star anise that was just delicious.

My fried Karl, brought an incredible sausage from Zingerman's of Ann Arbor that was infused with black truffles. Before you cut into it, it had that stinky amazing smell of a good cheese.

Certainly, no weekend is complete without some delicious alcoholic beverages. After our experience with the Caldera canned beers in previous trips, we had several other canned craft beers. I liked the Modus Hoperandi from Ska Brewing in Colorado. The can was all decked out in the Two Tone style and it said "Lip up Fatty" on the bsck.
For a lighter flavor, the Mama's Little Yella Pils from Oskar Blues was really nice.
We tried some Tito's Handmade Vodka from Austin, TX that was more like a whiskey in it's bite and more character than more widely available vodka.
Stay tuned for part 2.