Food Porn.
Apr. 14th, 2002 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaFriday night, Ben and I tried a new restaurant: Blue Agave Restaurante y Tequileria in Federal Hill. (The link takes you to the menu, which is well worth browsing.) This is not your $5.99 combination platter, shredded iceberg lettuce, deep fryer heavy, refried beans straight from the can kind of Mexican restaurant.
I had duck. Excuse me, I had pechuga de pato a la parrilla con mole de Xico. Chargrilled duck breast, medium rare, in a pool of deep rich nutty mole sauce, served with what looked like mashed potatoes, but turned out to be mashed roasted corn. And nopales (cactus) cut in strips, marinated, and grilled. I'd never had cactus - it tastes like aloe vera smells, refreshing and astringent.
Ben had lamb colorado, a sort of a lamb stew that had been baked overnight in banana leaves and then served with chile sauce. It was good, but I think I made the better choice. I've never seen duck in a Mexican restaurant, but once I'd taken a bite it seemed as if nothing in the world suited duck better than mole sauce.
We shared an appetizer platter: homemade chorizo and loganiza sausages, a grilled quail in mole sauce, a goat quesadilla, cactus salad, tortillas, and two kinds of cheese: one sharp and crumbly, one soft and mild.
We'll have to go back, because I didn't get the chance to try the mahi mahi veracruzana, seared mahi mahi with a sauce made from tomatoes, poblanos, lime, Spanish olives, garlic and Mexican oregano. And we'll have to go back with someone who likes tequila, because they have eighty different varieties. Any takers?
I had duck. Excuse me, I had pechuga de pato a la parrilla con mole de Xico. Chargrilled duck breast, medium rare, in a pool of deep rich nutty mole sauce, served with what looked like mashed potatoes, but turned out to be mashed roasted corn. And nopales (cactus) cut in strips, marinated, and grilled. I'd never had cactus - it tastes like aloe vera smells, refreshing and astringent.
Ben had lamb colorado, a sort of a lamb stew that had been baked overnight in banana leaves and then served with chile sauce. It was good, but I think I made the better choice. I've never seen duck in a Mexican restaurant, but once I'd taken a bite it seemed as if nothing in the world suited duck better than mole sauce.
We shared an appetizer platter: homemade chorizo and loganiza sausages, a grilled quail in mole sauce, a goat quesadilla, cactus salad, tortillas, and two kinds of cheese: one sharp and crumbly, one soft and mild.
We'll have to go back, because I didn't get the chance to try the mahi mahi veracruzana, seared mahi mahi with a sauce made from tomatoes, poblanos, lime, Spanish olives, garlic and Mexican oregano. And we'll have to go back with someone who likes tequila, because they have eighty different varieties. Any takers?
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Date: 2002-04-14 12:34 pm (UTC)About those question marks:
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=news&itemid=54041
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Date: 2002-04-14 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-04-14 01:28 pm (UTC)In separate food news, I have some lemon stilton cheese here that Gene S. sent back with me. It's surprisingly good.
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Date: 2002-04-14 02:45 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 2002-04-14 04:08 pm (UTC)You are?!? Oh, right, about the culinary choices.
So come on down!
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Date: 2002-04-14 04:28 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 2002-04-14 02:42 pm (UTC)There's a "Mexican fusion" place near the campus where I work that serves a duck chimichanga (duck confit, black beans and chipotle peppers rolled in a very light flour tortilla and quick-fried) with a dab of habanero-tinged yogurt and a corn salsa that's to DIE for ...
And yes, if I were in your neighborhood, I'd definitely take you up on the tequila tasting. In recent years I've discovered the joys of sipping really good tequila, which is a whole different experience from the "let's see how much of this rotgut we can drink before we puke" variety of tequila-drinking I recall (*shudder*) from my misspent youth ..
Re:
Date: 2002-04-14 06:24 pm (UTC)Ooh, that sounds good. In fact, that sounds like something that Misha would absolutely love. I'll have to try that sometime. (He looks over my shoulder and says: "Mmmmmm....")
The mashed roasted corn was the color and texture of mashed potatoes - maybe a bit grainier. Ben used the word masa. It definitely wasn't polenta, but maybe it was something else in the cornmeal family?
By all means!
Date: 2002-04-15 08:55 am (UTC)For Rivka: Masa is the particular type of fine-ground Mexican cornmeal used to make corn tortillas, tamales and a whole bunch of other Mexican dishes. It's a bit finer-textured than polenta or grits - kind of halfway between meal and flour. Hm... I could see dry-roasting it in a skillet and then preparing as you would polenta or cornmeal mush ...
Isn't it cool how the same basic staple - dried, ground-up corn - can take on so many different guises? I have a friend who claims to loathe grits, but who raves over my polenta. I haven't had the heart to tell him they're pretty much the same thing, just seasoned differently (well, and the fact that the corn from which grits is (are?) made is treated with lye before it's dried and ground ...)
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Date: 2002-04-15 08:17 pm (UTC)Which makes it, oddly enough, unspeakably vile. But it also makes the protein more accessible.
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Date: 2002-04-16 07:44 am (UTC)I'm pondering a mix of kernels of corn roasted on the cob, with masa. Did it have any of the texture of fresh corn kernels, or just of mashed potato texture? Maybe if you took roasted corn kernels and put it through a food mill...
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Date: 2002-04-16 08:36 am (UTC)It had bits of fresh corn kernels in it, yes. Probably roasted. Really, though, I think you're just going to have to come visit and try it yourself.
Is your e-mail working? I got a delay-of-delivery notice yesterday.
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Date: 2002-04-16 10:52 am (UTC)(Speaking of which, I need someone to transpo the two servers that were in SF down to La Jolla for me.) E-mail should be fine from here on out. Anything that was mailed to me Saturday or Sunday should be resent, though. Actually, anything from the last week that I haven't responded to.
And yes, yes...on the list of many reasons for me to go out to your part of the world. I'm definitely booked solid until end of May, though. More on that in an update to my journal tomorrow, probably.
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Date: 2002-04-14 09:55 pm (UTC)Oh, *drool*. =)
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Date: 2002-04-15 01:58 am (UTC)(I would be having paroxysms of foodie envy at that menu if it were not that I have a source for similarly spectacular Mexican food nearby. I'll have to ask them about mole de xico.)
Re:
Date: 2002-04-15 04:29 am (UTC)*blink* You don't say. Why, I had no idea that this post might serve as any sort of inducement to get you to visit Baltimore. No idea at all.
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Date: 2002-04-15 08:25 am (UTC)