Little Fish Sunday Night Prix Fixe

Touted as one of the better deals in Philly's BYOB scene, we packed up a bottle of Pinot Gris and headed down to the 'original' Little Fish in Queen Village for their $35 $28 Sunday Night Prix Fixe. We had 8PM reservations and the way they work the Sunday night dinner is to keep all the diners outside until 8 sharp, at which point they open the doors to the tiny establishment and begin the service.

Tacked to the wall is the menu for the evening...a five course set meal featuring what we hoped would be some excellent seafood.



Starter was a salad of bitter endive and green apple...a crispy, crunchy, tart & bitter way to open up the palette for the lighter style of fish to come.



Second course was the raw tuna served on a block of Himalayan pink salt, accompanied by a diced beet salad. We found that rubbing the slivers of fatty tuna against the salt block released a subtle saltiness that suggested the briny waters that these fish were pulled from. Unfortunately, my sense of taste just isn't refined enough sometimes to pick up on the show of flavors that raw fish is meant to provide the diner...so I'll take Elizabeth's word for it.



Next up was a portion of sustainable Scottish salmon cooked with a tri-layer effect that left the skin-side a crispy sear, while creating a strata of cooked and rare flesh. Every forkful was like a combination of three fish all at once...cripsy skin, flaky meat and a succulent rare edge...the consistency was incredible and it had me rethinking the way I will be cooking fish next time. The mussel & farro salad on the side was an earthy contrast to the fish.



The final savory course was hands down our favorite...a Vietnamese-Style Escolar. Resting in a light stock tinged with fishstock and showered with crisp, fresh veg & cilantro, the flaky Escolar had picked up the Southeast-Asian flavors, yet retained some crunch on the outside. It looked like it had been pan-fried briefly, creating a slight crust that sealed in the flavor of the fish while soaking up the character of the stock.

Only after the fact did we find out about the unfortunate side-effects that can befall some diners who over-indulge in Escolar...mercifully, Little Fish kept the portion sizes small enough where this wouldn't be an issue, although I was a little concerned for the staff, who were sharing a uber-generous portion of the Escolar amongst themselves as service wound down.



Dessert was a bit of pumpkin mousse & a little slab of chocolate ganache that was drizzled in a berry sauce. While it was a pleasant finish, I would've gladly thrown caution to the wind and wolfed down on another chunk of Escolar.

Sunday Evening in Glenside & Mt. Airy

Clearing out the memory stick on the camera I forgot to post about an outing we had into the 'burbs to grab a beer & a bite before the David Sedaris show at the Keswick.



If you're not familiar with Sedaris, he's a regular guest on public radio's This American Life and his books are a mix of snarky romps from his diary and quirky recollections from his childhood...Check out Holidays on Ice for a sneak peek at what life is like working as one of Santa's elves at Macy's in New York.



He's got a famous funny sister, Amy, who did a hillarious satirical cookbook ala Martha Stewart syndrome titled I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

Back to the topic.

Before the show, we stopped for dinner at the Earth + Bread Brewery in Mt. Airy. We had visited before on a mid-day Saturday before they were offering lunches and while the beer was decent ( I want to say that I had a beer made with gruet which was not half-bad) we missed out on the main attraction, the thin-crust 'pizza'.



I enjoyed a light Berliner Weisse, while Elizabeth chose an Italian red - it's not just beer...they have decent by the glass selections of wine too...several affordable reds...Italian, Spanish & some New World from S. America.



Here's a shot of the upstairs, which I didn't realize existed - not only do they have plenty of overflow seating in the light-filled and airy second floor, but there's a second bar as well. The restaurant hosted a smattering of young families enjoying a Sunday night meal.



While these may resemble pizza, they're careful to point out that these are flatbreads...to me, the thin crust and crispy dough was so close to the latest wave of thin-crust pizza offerings around Philly that it was really splitting hairs.

Here's a shot of the special that night , a blend of arugula pesto, fresh tomatoes (last of the season) and shitake mushrooms...a great veg option and the mushroom flavors really stood out.



Check out the menu here.

This is the sausage pizza w/mushrooms & mozz. The interesting element of this pizza was that the sauce was not a red sauce but rather a pesto made from banana peppers...much tangier and acidic than tomato sauce with a spicy kick in each bite. After the third slice it was a little overwhelming but shared, the pepper pesto makes for a wonderfully weird alternative to red sauce.

Pantry Cannoli in a Pinch

The sudden need for a cannoli sprung up but we weren't exactly prepared to cook up the shells.

Elizabeth rolled up two tubes of heavy duty foil, then sprayed it with oil.



Next, she wrapped the foil rolls with a sheet of spring roll wrapper, kind of like a wonton wrapper but thinner and more pliable. To give it some sweetness, Elizabeth made a small batch of cinnamon sugar, which was sprinkled over a sheet of the wrapper...she then laid a second sheet over it, sealing in the spicy sugar between the layers of crispy wrapper.



The wrapperss went into a 375 degree oven until slightly golden brown, then we uncoiled the foil slowly to reveal just the shells.

Next, Elizabeth mixed some powdered sugar into fresh ricotta from Claudio's, which was piped into the shells. Finished with a dusting of powdered sugar and some dark chocolate 'snow', grated off a fine mesh microplane, and you've got a much lighter version of cannoli straight from the pantry.

Stuffed Delicata Squash Rings & Crispy Baked Cauliflower

Incorporated some autumn farmer's market fare into the kitchen this week. Rather than go the 'hollowed-out squash boat' route, we sliced the Delicata into rings and scooped out the seeds from the center. These squash 'timbales' were then brushed with olive oil on the cut sides and roasted in a 375 oven until a knife could easily prick the flesh, about 20-25 minutes.

These squash timbales were then stuffed with a seasoned rice (onion & celery sauteed in chicken stock and added to steamed rice) and toasted pumpkins seeds.



Along with the squash, we sliced up some of Tom Cultons' multi-colored cauliflower to roast on a seperate pan along with teh squash. The secret to getting crunchy cauliflower is to cut the florets with as large a flat surface as you can create, oil the cut side and place on the pan cut-side down.



The pumpkin seed rice stuffed squash went great with those crispy purple cauliflower florets. We served them up alongside a boneless/skinless chicken thigh, slathered with an herbed white-wine pan-sauce.

Restaurant Redux - Crunchy Shrimp & Avocado Salad Stack

Here we have a take on one of the dishes we enjoyed during our trip to Maine this summer - a stack of avocado & shrimp, served on a bed of seaweed salad and crispy puffed rice paper wrappers.



This is a lousy picture, but you can get the gist of the seafood & avocado stack. We decided to forgo the Marie Rose dressing that accompanied the original from The Burning Tree and downgrade from lobster to shrimp.



We don't have a clue when it comes to making seaweed salad, so we picked this up at the sushi place Gaja Gaja on South...tasted great - perfect balance of crunch and chew with sesame oil throughout



Avocados getting sliced for the stack.



This was the 'fun' element...if you drop pieces of the rice paper into hot oil, they will puff up like vermicelli or a pork skin, creating a light and crispy cracker.


Tthe shrimp in Maine seemed to be smaller in general, so we bought something in the 30-40 range; butter poached and peeled, they were OK, but looking back we probably should have chopped them a bit, mixed in some diced avocado and placed them on the crisps to marry the flavors a little tighter.

Restaurant Redux - Crispy Kale & Clams

Here's the original dish I enjoyed during our trip to Maine - what I remember most was how the tasty bitterness of the kale and played into the buttery bitterness of the pine nuts and the clam broth. The crispy leaves soaked up the broth, making for a rich & deep flavor.

I like the presentation as well...it conjured up an image of the seafloor with the clams resting gently on a bed of seaweed in one of the tidal pools along the rocky coastlines we had walked across.



Pan-roasting the pine nuts here...these will burn in a instant if you're not careful.




We took the stalk off the kale leaves and washed them thoroughly. With a rough chop, the leaves were dressed with a little oilive oil, sea salt & pepper before being laid out on a baking sheet. They went into a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, turning them over halfway through and making sure they didn't burn.

We picked up some little neck clams...the cherrystones were just humongous, so we opted for the small shells. Here they are resting in a bowl of ice cold water in the hopes of cleaning out any sand that may be inside the shells still.

Elizbeth brought home the New Portuguese Table last week and in a nod to the classic pork-shellfish combo of that cuisine, we braised and seared a link of Linguiça, a milder seasoned sausage with paprika and having a slight sweetness hinted in the spices.



The clams were steamed, then added to the bowl with the sausage, pine nuts and goat cheese crumbles. I strained the broth that the calms had cooked in to remove any sand or shell bits, adding a little butter and salt for taste.



Finally we poured the broth over the mix, liberally sprinkled with the oven-crisped kale leaves, and dug in. A few of the clams still had a bit of sand in the shell, which was a bummer, but the overall effect was close to the original, with the kale, pine nuts and broth combing forces to create that bitter, nutty & buttery flavor.

Burning Tree Restaurant - Otter Creek Maine

Located just outside Bar Harbor, the Burning Tree restaurant was located in what used to be a residential house and was surrounded by greenhouses and raised flower beds...a promise of locally grown produce to appear on the menu.



The friends we were visiting suggested we get two orders of these seafood fritters - golf-ball sized deep crispy fried nuggets of a scallop mousse studded with shrimp



The Kale & Clams starter suggested the natural surrounding of the seafloor that these clams could be found in - the kale was oven-crisped and resting above a shallow broth of clam liquor, pine nuts and goat cheese.

Elizabeth's Avocado & Lobster Stack (camera setting blurred this accidentally) was resting on a rice-paper crisp , deep fried puffed spring roll wrappers, and lightly dressed with a Marie Rose-style sauce.

The Bouillabaisse was a saffron-infused mix of shellfish & chunks of monkfish.

The Burning Tree building was surrounded by raised flower beds overflowing with late summer blooms. Several of the edible blooms appeared on our dining plates - orange nasturtium & cumin carrots were the side dish that evening.

Goat Cheese at Seal Cove Farm

We took a little mini-trip to Maine and stayed with friends just outside Bar Harbor. Down the road from the house was the Seal Cove Farm, located on a road called Milky Way.

The farm has a small shop where you can drop in and sample from several of their fresh chevre and aged cheeses. The chevre is prepared both naked or herb encrusted - the dill being one of my favorites. They also sell ash-covered goat cheese pyramids, as well as two different varieties of blended milk cheeses.

Although Elizabeth was eyeing the colossal ash-coated pyramids, we ended up taking home two of the more unusual varieties. Pearl was a goat-cow blend that resembled brie or Bucheron, a rinded cheese with a creamy center. One of the cheese-makers explained that a high-end cheese shop in New York City would buy the cup-cake shaped cheeses and wrap them in sumac leaves to mature in their cellar before re-selling them.

The second purchase was one of the Tommes, a firm disc of aged goat & cow cheese that was steeped in olive oil laced with juniper and pink peppercorns. There were a few blooms on the Tommes that lent a soft blue-cheese tickle that quickly mellowed.

Located just off Route 3, it's an easy drive for anybody visiting Bar Harbor.

Maine Diner - Lobster Roll & Blueberry Pie

Located just north of the Maine-New Hampshire state line is the Maine Diner - just take Exit 19 to Wells and follow the signs down Route 1.

This is an old-school diner wrapped in a postcard-stand simply crawling with tourists...but hey Maine is known as Vacationland, so I won't hold it against them, even despite the fact that the adjacent gift shop bears the title (groan) Remember the Maine.

There was a 30 minute wait to be seated and several people were electing to take the counter seats to cut down on the wait. Once we were in and seated, service was awesomely fast yet I never felt rushed. Specials on the board announced things like Red Flannel Hash and Potluck, but were here for the seafood and began to zero in on the highlights of the menu.

The bowl of seafood chowder here was well stocked with a mix of Maine shrimp (read jumbo salad shrimp), scallops and potatoes; you can see the abundance I dredged up from the bottom of my cup. Elizabeth ordered the she-crab soup, which was a little too gelatinous, having the consistency somewhere between cottage cheese and Elmer's glue . I offered to cut the gooey mess with several spoonfuls of the delicious golden broth of my chowder and after which her cup of she-crab began to resemble a soup.

This is what we were really in search of...the lobster roll. The Maine Diner featured two kinds of lobster rolls, cold and hot. We opted for the classic cold lobster in a hot bun; I was worried that the lobster would be too mayonnaise-coated but it turned out to provide just enough of a binding agent to hold together the sweet lobster claw and knuckle pieces that nearly spilled out from the bun with every bite.

There was also a "Lobster Pie" advertised as a special, but the description seemed to conjure up visions of lobster and stuffing, scooped into a small casserole dish and thrown under the broil to heat through till crunchy.

I was skeptical about the awesome accolades of the blueberry pie on the menu until I saw one go by to a neighboring table. The diminutive Maine blueberry packs more berry flavor due to the smaller size lending more skins to the pie mix. Coupled with the fact that the pie filling itself was not overly sweetened and the crust was homemade, I'd have to say this was the best slice of pie I've had in recent memory.

When I went to pay the check, I mentioned to the cashier how excellent the blueberry pie was and he confessed to never having tried it. I guess being surrounded by lobster and blueberries, you don't really see what all the fuss is about...I know when I used to work in an ice-cream store as a kid the customers would ask how one of the 31 flavors tasted and were somewhat surprised to hear that I didn't know because I never touched the stuff.

Ricotta Stuffed Pattypan Squash

Earlier in the Fall, Headhouse Farmer's market had some bright little Pattypan squash showing - Elizabeth picked up a pint and proceeded later that evening to adapt a recipe from her childhood to reduce our ricotta stockpile.

Claudio's ricotta, at $4 per lb. is a steal - we're basically trying to work it into every dish imaginable. This was one of the better experiments...a gratin of sorts placed into the hollowed out squash.

A mix of sautéed squash & shallots, along with some seasoned ricotta, go back into the squash and into a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes until warmed through.

We served the squash alongside roast leg of lamb and prosciutto-wrapped fingerling potatoes for a comforting Sunday Night meal; the fingerlings were a take on something I saw over on Studiokitchen earlier this year, fingerlings cooked in peanut oil, then wrapped in Iberico ham and deep fried. I didn't go as luxe as Shola's version, just boiling the potatoes, wrapping them in prosciutto and finishing them with a pan-fry...neglected to snap a photo of mine but they looked something like this...photogenically nowhere near as close to what Studiokitchen cranks out though.

Riffin on Tiffin - Homemade Keema Mattar

Now that the summer of the burger is over, it seems like pizza will be the new food proving grounds in Philly kitchens. Cruising by Starr's new Stella tonight and seeing the packed crowds of happy diners munching down on thin-crust pizza got me in the mood to recall one of our pizza experiments at home.

Recent favorites of ours are Tiffin's pizza offerings. The Indian twist on thin crust was right up our alley...and considering our near addiction to lamb, the Keema Mattar pizza, a minced lamb and pesto pizza pictured above, seemed like the perfect redux for home.

SuperFresh had a leg of lamb on sale last week for under $15, so I portioned it out into a shank, a roast and then minced the scraps up for the Keema Mattar topping.

The minced meat was simply seasoned and seared...I added a little dry mint to the meat as it finished, just to make sure that the flavor came through.

The pesto was a blend of mint and parsley, with a clove of garlic.

I didn't have time to pound out some pizza dough and then let it rise, so I used two pieces of lavash bread for the crust, brushed in olive oil and slathered in a greek yogurt and ricotta mix. These went into a 500 degree oven for a quick crisp.

Once the crust had firmed up, I just sprinkled on some peas and minced lamb to coat.

The end result wasn't even close to Tiffin's (the pesto was too minty and when it mixed with the ricotta it tasted "like toothpaste" quipped Elizabeth) . Next time, I'll probably not cheap out on the dough by going pre-made, use less topping and spread it around a bit more and most definitely go easier on the mint, maybe blending in some spinach with the pesto instead of parsley.

Sopes - Crab & Tomatillo vs Chorizo

Having picked up a large amount of tomatillos from the market, we wanted to roast them slightly and combine them with crab to serve on a masa flour sope. The crab mixture was seasoned with a little bit of olive oil and small diced hot peppers fro a tickle of heat.

Here's a great post on creating sopes and then loading them up with all sorts of toppings; it's a good guide to making sopes the right way. We cheated a bit on ours and didn't crimp the rims because it really uses alot more oil to fry these little guys and we were trying to make them not heavily fried.

The chorizo was standard fare picked up from Whole Foods. Crumbled atop a smidge of greek yogurt to keep the heat in check and help hold it to the pan, the spicy sausage was a contract to the tangy & cool crab.

Tortillita - Savory Spanish Seafood Chickpea Pancake

We recently bought a bag of chickpea flour, hoping to recreate a version of hummus that we hadn't enjoyed for years. Unfortunately, we were totally off the mark with the recipe and as a result we wound up with lots of the stuff to experiment with.

A quick search on Google found this hidden gem of a dish from New York Times writer Mark Bittman, the Tortillita or Spanish Chickpea Seafood Pancakes

Watch Mark throw one together in a demonstration video - as always his low-key delivery underscores how straightforward this thing is to make, plus he talks a lot about his several attempts and the variations.

Tortillitas hit all of our favorite criteria; appetizer/tapas sized, involves some type of seafood, and is easy to create in a pinch using basic ingredients, except for the chickpea flour.

Shrimp Tortillitas - Mark Bittman

1/2 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup water
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup chopped onion or scallions
About 1/2 cup raw shrimp, chopped, or scallops or other shellfish or fish
2 to 3 tablespoons chopped chives, parsley, thyme or cilantro
Olive oil

Mix the dry ingredients together, I like this recipe becasue it's easy to memorize the ratios - 1/2 regular flour to 1/2 chickpea flour, then an amount of water equal to the amount of flour...just remember to put in 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder for every cup of flour you use.

Slowly add in the water...the chickpea flour will cause the mix to clump up if you go too fast.

The recipe mentioned throwing the fish or shellfish into the batter, then ladling it into a hot pan for a shallow fry in the olive oil, but we found that it was best to keep the fish out, ladle the mix in and immediately throw the fish on top as you evened out the batter...you have more control with your placement of the fish and can spread it around, plus the portioning comes out equal and you're not left with one skimpy tortillita and one bulging with fish.

Flip it after about 3 minutes as the edges get crispy; you can use the traditional pancake toss if you want, but I didn't want the fish slopping all over the place, so I turned it in the pan.

After it's golden on the other side, about 3 more minutes, just remove and serve. Here we sliced it into wedges, garnished with a bit of the fish and served it on a bed of warmed rocket.

The flavor of the chickpea flour delivers the umame while the lack of gluten in creates a crispier texture around the edges of the tortillita. You can use pretty much any kind of seafood with this - cod, shrimp, calamari - it just has to be cut small enough to cook fast and not break the pancake as it's forming.

We've made them for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night snacks and they never fail to please.

Summer Scallops w/Sauteed Corn, Pepper & Avacado

One last go around for the summer combo of corn & scallops. This time we added a slight mash of avocado beneath each scallop to fix them in place on the bed of summer corn.

These avocado were a little less ripe than we would have liked, but the stronger 'green' flavor that an under-ripened avocado has worked well with the peppers in the corn.

The avocado was slightly seasoned with a bit of salt and a touch of olive oil to give it some smoothness.

Here's a shot of the black peppers that we picked up from Savoie Farms at Headhouse Market. The flesh of the black pepper was a little thicker and had a pronounced crunch, which worked well to marry the green-ish tinge of the avocado to the corn.

The corn was sliced off the cob and then added to the diced pepper.

Sauteed with a touch of butter and olive oil, we didn't overseason the corn.

Final step was to create little lillypads for the scallops to rest upon.

This is starting to become a habit - more seared scallops.

Roasted Cherry Tomato Tart

Spurred on by the success of her last experiment and the ever-growing mountain of cherry tomatoes being pushed out by the Sweet 100 plants, Elizabeth decided to make a Roasted Cherry Tomato Tart (link to recipe) to go along with a rack of lamb we were having for dinner.

To make the tart visually interesting, she threw in a few different tomato varieties that we had picked up at the farmer's market. One of my favorties was the Black Cherry Tomatoes from Savoie Organic Farms; these were a little firmer fleshed and have a deeper, less tart taste than your typical cherry.

Oiled and seasoned with some salt, pepper and Early Italian Purple Garlic from the market, these went into a 400 degree oven to roast away. After about 30 minutes, they were cooled off and the liquid they were released was drained off to use in a marinade for the lamb.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth made the tart shell using your standard pie-crust kind of recipe...cold cubed butter, pulsed in the food processor with flour & dash of salt, then a little bit of cold water & dash of lemon juice mixed in...she left the cornmeal out of that the recipe called for.

The dough went into a little tapas pan and then into the oven until golden brown; it was left to cool alongside the tomatoes.

Next, she mixed together equal parts goat cheese and thick Greek Yogurt (we use Fage 0% Fat), mashing in a little nub of leftover ricotta salata to add some saltiness. She left out the mustard and instead simply spread the cheese across the now-cool tart crust.

Next, time to load it up with tomatoes!

The tart went back into the oven for a brief time to warm through and get all the flavors to marry, then out it came, sprinked with fresh thyme.

Here's the final result, served alongside a slice of lamb. This tart was a little heavier on the tomato than the example from the recipe, but when it's being served alongside lamb rack, the tart cherries, creamy goat cheese and crispy tart crust was a perfect match to the juicy lamb, served rare.