Zaftig's, Coolidge Corner

My brother IM'd me yesterday, saying my parents had been trying to reach me all day. I called them right away, thinking something had happened. No, they had read on here that I had a cold and wanted to make sure I was still alive. I assured them that my magic chicken soup had brought me back from the dead and that they didn't need to worry. They were getting ready to head down the Cape for the 4th of July, so they met me in Brookline for some dinner.

My father picked Zaftig's in Coolidge Corner right away - give the man a menu that says "Breakfast All Day" and he's in heaven. He ordered the Banana-stuffed French Toast, as recommended by the waitress. He must have liked it, because it had vanished before I had even finished half of my sandwich.



There were a lot of good things on the menu, and I was tempted to be my father's daughter and go for breakfast - chocolate French toast, specifically - but the chicken Caesar roll-up sounded really good too. So I did what I usually do... wait until the waitress looks at me, then let my mouth make the decision of what words it wants to say. Tonight, my mouth chose "Caesar," so I ran with it.

Overall, this was an excellent sandwich. The dressing was tangy, with a pronounced lemony zip, and there was a ton of good grated Parm. What I didn't like - this is going to sound strange and is probably the only time in the history of restaurant critiques that this has ever been said - there was way too much chicken! It was like the lettuce was just there for show, peaking out of the roll-up's cut edge. When I pretend I'm being healthy by ordering a salad in sandwich form, I want there to be some semblance to salad.



I'm tempted to go back for Brunch sometime, but I really don't like having to wait a long time for breakfast. Especially when they serve breakfast all day...


Note: My mother emailed me this morning with a link she thought would interest me. She mentioned that she was surprised I hadn't written anything about Zaftig's yet. What do you think I am, Mom, a blogging machine?

Maca-don'ts

Day two of being home with a summer cold. I'm feeling much better, and I think I'll be 100% by tomorrow. So instead of napping all afternoon, I decided to try something I've been wanting to take a stab at for a while - macarons. My roommate had pointed out a bowl of leftover egg whites last night, so I figured it was the perfect time to make an attempt.

The recipe in my Williams-Sonoma Baking book looked easy enough. I subbed almonds for hazelnuts, since that's what I had around. The result? Not so hot. Is my apartment too humid? Were the eggs too old? Did I have too heavy a hand with the folding? Did I pipe them too big? Um, yes to all, probably. Leave it to me to make something with whipped egg whites on one of the hottest days of the year. I didn't even bother making the ganache filling... none of the cookies were the same shape or size, so making sandwiches out of them would have been futile. But as I say, at least they still tasted good.

Anyone have a good macaron recipe, or tips to help in my next try?



Macarons, my variations on a Williams-Sonoma recipe
4 large egg whites at room temperature
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup toasted, skinned and ground almonds
2 cups confectioners' sugar

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine egg whites and cream of tartar. With the whip attachment, beat on medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Add the sugar slowly and continue to beat until stiff, shiny peaks form. Beat in the vanilla until blended. With a rubber spatula, fold in the almonds and confectioners' sugar until incorporated. Using a ziplock bag, pipe the batter onto a parchment sheet-lined baking sheet about an inch apart. Let the cookies sit, uncovered, at room temp for 30-40 minutes.

Heat oven to 350 degrees and position the rack in the center of the oven. Place an empty cookie sheet on the rack to insulate the baking cookies. Bake each sheet of cookies for about 10-13 minutes or until golden and firm.

Food for a Summer Cold

Out of the blue yesterday afternoon, my throat started to hurt. I knew what was coming - the most fun of all the different kind of colds, the summer cold. It's that cold you get when the air conditioners first get turned on strong, and it's that cold that is impossible to ameliorate with tea and soup because it's so friggin' hot outside.

So I stayed home from work, and all I could think about was diet Sprite and soup. Yes, steaming hot soup. I scoured my cookbooks and the internet for a while, but all I could find were recipes involving whole chickens and hours and hours of simmering time. Finally, I found something in Cooking Light magazine that looked doable.



This recipe probably took me longer than it would have if I hadn't been sick. Shredding the chicken was an especially difficult task that took more coordination than I actually had at the time, and I wasn't coherent enough to notice that the burner the soup was on wasn't actually heating up. The results were good; this is tasty soup, and I can feel myself getting better already (ah, placebo effect). I really don't think you need the 3 pounds of chicken in the recipe, though; 1 pound of chicken breasts and 1 pound of thighs would have been plenty. The recipe also suggested using the same pot to cook the noodles, then the soup, to save clean up time, hence the noodles cooked well ahead of time. I now have enough soup to last me roughly three weeks.

Cooking Light Rosemary Chicken Noodle Soup

4 cups cooked wide egg noodles
1 Tbsp olive oil
8 cups water
4 cups chicken broth
1 large onion, chopped
1 cup chopped celery
2 Tbsp dried rosemary
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken thighs
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast
1 10 ounce package petite-cut carrots (or 1 1/2 cups chopped carrots)
1 6 ounce package fresh baby spinach
juice of 1 lemon
black pepper and salt to taste

After cooking noodles, toss with olive oil and set aside.

Combine water, broth, onion, celery, rosemary, and chicken pieces in a large pot. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove chicken, cool slightly, and shred with 2 forks. Add carrot to the soup and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 6 minutes or until carrot is tender. Add shredded chicken and spinach and cook until spinach is wilted. Stir in noodles, lemon juice and salt and pepper.



Since I was so with it while I made the soup, I cooked all my noodles instead of the 4 cups I would need for the soup. What to do with the leftovers? Cover them in cheese! (In my head, that sounded like "I'm covered in bees!!" ) There's nothing better than egg noodles covered in mozzarella, dotted with butter, and baked to form a wonderful crunchy, gooey, oily mess.



Think I was done there? No way. I needed some more comfort food, and while I was at the market, the baking section spoke to me. Quite literally, I think, since I wasn't completely with it after walking to the store. Lemon cake mix and lemon pudding mix combine to the tastiest, moistest cake. Even my roommate approved.

Grafton Street, Harvard Square

I've walked by Grafton Street Pub about a million times, but there always seemed to be another restaurant ahead of it on my list. For some reason, the stars aligned last night, and I finally made it in... and man, am I happy I did.


We started with drinks and calamari while we waited for the rest of our party. This calamari was fantastic - very light and tender, not rubbery at all. It was accompanied by a zesty peppercorn dipping sauce, which added a lot more than the typical marinara or garlic aioli could.

Once we had our whole group, we ordered more drinks and the tomato and mozzarella appetizer to split. This was ok, but not great. It's obviously too early for really good tomatoes, so that part was a bit of a loss. The cheese tasted a little too much like regular mozzarella; it didn't have the smoothness, in both taste and texture, of a typical fresh mozzarella. The real winning part of the dish was the pickled red onions. I love red onions, but I don't like that I can still taste them hours later... I didn't get that at all with these. Pickling the onions made them very mild, and they were great alongside the so-so cheese and tomatoes.

Our entrees were back on the same level as our calamari appetizer. The seafood was masterfully handled - sea scallops were perfectly cooked, and the lobster risotto had powerful lobster flavor in every bite.

The steak frites were also very tasty. The cut of meat was a little fattier than I like, but I'm rather picky about that kind of thing. I do think the dish needed more sauce; the fries were ultra-crispy and benefit from being softened slightly by what sauce I could spare.

Overall, I would definitely head back to Grafton Street some time soon. The portions were large, the food expertly cooked, and prices reasonable.

The Mystery of the Chip

I don't know about you, but when I'm issued a challenge, especially by a international corporation, I'm going to take it.

Get it. Taste it. Name it. Doritos X-13D are a new, mysterious snack that have found their way onto the market. The creepy black packaging, complete with instructions and clues, lead to the intrigue. The company asks that you give their new flavor a name, only giving you the clue that the taste is an "all-American classic."

I went the licking route... getting the full impact of the flavor powder without the distracting corn-chip background. I was immediately struck by the flavor of meat, although I kept saying "It's shish kebab!" After a short discussion, we decided on cheeseburger... a look at the ingredients included beef flavoring, cheese powder, and tomato flavoring (I don't have the bag anymore, but it might list pickle flavor as well). To go even further, one friend tasted a chip and said "Burger King Whopper!" I'm not sure if Doritos is trying to be that specific or if that's just the flavor that caught her, but her specificity made me laugh.

All in all, I wouldn't eat these chips again. If I want beef flavor, I'm going to eat a real burger...

A few days ago, I was browsing Tastespotting and saw the most amazing picture: a crepe cake made by Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice. I found myself coming back to that picture, wanting to take a bite out of my computer screen, and I knew I had to make one.

Lucky for me, my roommate gets out of work early on Fridays, and he used the afternoon to do all the hard work for me... making the crepes and the pastry cream. He used a different crepe recipe, since we hadn't made the batter the night before. With our electric crepe maker, he made about 30 crepes that were all ready when I got home.

The cake was incredibly easy to assemble. I decided to use the filling to "ice" the whole cake... our friends didn't know what we were making, and we wanted it to be a surprise when we cut the first slice.

The cake turned out to be very delicate. I spread the layers very thin in order to have enought to cover all the crepes. The presentation was fantastic, and this would prove to be a perfect dessert for a dinner party, since you could make it earlier in the day. This cake looks much more difficult to make than it actually is, and it's incredibly elegant.

A Different View of Mike's Pastry

I've never been a big fan of Mike's Pastry in the North End. It's not that I have anything against their food. It's the fact that, on any given night, there are about a million people shoving their way inside, trying to buy pastry. There's no semblance of order in the place, just a mass of bodies pressed up against the glass case. And God forbid if you actually want table service!

And it's a little strange how the box is something of a status symbol around town. I'm not sure if Mike's would be quite as popular if you couldn't find people, especially tourists and students, carrying their boxes around all over town, like it was a blue Tiffany's bag or something.

For a birthday party at work this week, one of my coworkers brought in a cake from Mike's. I had never had one of their cakes; I expected it to be decent, but not great. This cake was fantastic, plain and simple.

The cake itself was soft and moist, not dried out like I expected. The mousse-y filling was creamy and not too sweet, well balanced out by the overly-ripe strawberries. The chocolate flakes on the exterior provided a nice textural balance to the soft mousse. The only part that didn't work for me was the uber-chocolate piping along the top of the cake. It was way too sweet and dense, and it drew away from the cake as a whole.

Overall, though, I was quite happy with this. I think I wouldn't have as many problems with Mike's if I went during off times and didn't have to deal with the crowds. The problem now is getting down to Mike's at some random time...