Raspberry Danish from Extraordinary Desserts

Of the three things I got from Extraordinary Desserts in October – the Chocolate Pecan Tart, the Chocolate Streusel Cake, and the Raspberry Danish -, the danish was by far the best. I admitted in an earlier post that I preferred fruit, and sweetness, and melting textures to chocolate, and pastry, and crunch. Well, this danish hit all the right spots. It was also the cheapest, at just $3.50, compared to the approximately $10 cost of the other items.

Karen calls it a danish but it seems more like a fruit pastry to me. Its crust is layered with pastry dough, topped with a wonderfully tart raspberry puree, some perfect vanilla glaze, and some berries for fun.

A daisy on a danish

This was one of the cases where the flower placed on top was truly appreciated. It looks so beautiful there. With the other items, the red and yellow roses against the dark brown hue of chocolate seemed a little off to me, but a red and white pastry topped with white flowers and red berries was truly striking and harmonious.

Mm, raspberries

The raspberry puree had soaked into the pastry dough, softening it with delightful berry flavor. That glaze was just a masterful touch as well. It’s such a simple thing, but it was a great, sticky, sweet contrast to the bright and seedy flavor of the puree. It was just wonderful.

A little gooey raspberry shot for you

You can see the gold foil here, but I honestly did not care in this case because this was so delicious. It was the perfect combination of sweet, tart, soft, comforting, and beautiful. It was so uncomplicated compared to the busy chocolate pecan tart and so light next to the chocolate streusel.

I went to Colorado for a week this past summer. I started in Denver to see the city, went over to Estes Park to see the mountains, and then drove to Vail to appease a childhood dream. I saw a silly movie a long time ago called Aspen Extreme about ski instructors, and Aspen and Vail became the magical province of the wealthy in my mind. Since Vail is only a 2-3 hour drive from Denver, I decided I just had to see the town. I splurged on the Sonnenalp, a Swiss, luxury hotel that had amazing rates in the ‘off season’.

It was the most amazing hotel experience I’ve had, and I’ve done a fair bit of traveling. The hotel had a lot of western antiques all over the place, like wooden farm implements and ancient telephones, and the rooms had cathedral ceilings above the bed, unfinished wood furniture, and stucco walls. My balcony opened out onto the courtyard, and my bathroom had double sinks. When I returned to my room after evening turndown, I found a chocolate chip cookie, carafe of water, a robe, and a pair of slippers set out for me.

Andy likes the evening turndown, too

I had opted to include a buffet breakfast at Ludwig’s with my room, and it matched the room in its luxury experience. First, the hostess and staff greeted me by name several times downstairs. I ate on a glass-covered veranda with the buffet a room away. When I walked in, I noticed the cereal bar straight off.

Cereal bar at Ludwig's in the Sonnenalp

This isn’t the most fantastic shot, but realize that each of those bowls on the top held a cereal topping: dark quinoa, white quinoa, flax, almonds, cashews, dried bananas, dried apricots, dried cranberries, raisins, coconut, and sunflower seeds. The cereal included frosted flakes, granola, bran flakes, fruit loops, and cornflakes.

I made this beauty. The fresh fruit came from the yogurt bar, right next to the cereal bar, which had plain yogurt, flavored yogurt, kiwi, strawberries, bananas, granola, and other delicious toppings. It was heaven.

Oh, cereal, I wish I had you now

Quinoa and cranberries

The cranberry is so jewel-like in that photo.

As I circled the room, I started to panic. It all looked delicious. There were hot foods, like scrambled eggs, potatoes, and bacon. There were pastries, muffins, and bagels. There was a waffle press. They even had cheese blintzes! They were yummy. The blueberry muffin was the bluest one I’ve ever had. Now, when I showed this muffin to my Facebook fans, half of them thought it looked disgusting, moldly, and too blue. I thought it was pretty, but I love blue anything.

Blueberry muffin at the Sonnenalp

Superblue blueberry muffin

So, after cereal, a muffin, eggs, and a blintz.. I went for more. I know. I know. But it was all so pretty! The apple pastry was just so-so, but isn’t that premade parfait cute? It was fresh strawberry jam, topped with yogurt, then some granola and a strawberry. They had similar shot glasses of sparkling grapefruit. Those were so beautiful but I didn’t want to be greedy.

Yogurt parfait and apple danish

I paid the bill. Except I didn’t, because it was part of my room. I just left a tip. Pretty sweet! The drink menu reminds me that the coffee came in a very large cup with a saucer, the kind you see tea served in at a coffee house. I think you could fit a softball in there. The reason I bring it up is because the china had a lovely pattern on it, and definitely seemed like high-quality porcelain. I felt like I was in The Sound of Music when drinking out of it.

Paying the bill

So, if you are wondering whether to stay at the Sonnenalp — yes, in the summer, definitely do it. If you’re wondering whether to add the breakfast to your room – yes, definitely do it! You won’t have omelets to order, but the food is very tasteful, tasty, and varied, with high-quality ingredients, a lovely presentation, and superior service.

Northwestern New Jersey is full of many wonders. It’s nothing like the factory-littered alleyway that the turnpike cuts through, or the dirty montage in the opening of the Sopranos. We’re called the Garden State, and this part of NJ is full of farmland, open spaces, barns, zoos, the Delaware Water Gap, the Appalachian Trail.. etc. When I go out there, I like to visit the Chatterbox, a 1950s-style restaurant that is round on the outside and filled with old movie posters on the inside.

They sell diner-like food: burgers, shakes, fries, chicken fingers, and whatnot. In the summer, they’ll even bring your food out to your car to keep the drive-in vibe going. We opted to go inside and ordered a cheesesteak. As you can see, they finely chop the meat, then add onions and peppers with a cheese of your choice on top. In this case, Lou opted for mozzarella. The fries were hot and fresh, which always makes me happy.

Cheesesteak from the Chatterbox

Staring down the barrel of a cheesesteak..

Melted cheese on a cheesesteak

I got a malted chocolate shake. I couldn’t taste the malt, but the shake was really thick, of medium chocolatiness, and topped with homemade whipped cream. The whipped cream was the best part.

Chocolate shake

They are generous with the serving, as you can see. It looks swirly like it came out of a can, but the color and taste really made it seem like it was freshly made. I ate it by the spoonful.

Tower of whipped cream

Naturally, I started off the meal with a salad. Vegetables make all dietary indiscretions go away, right?

Salad from the Chatterbox

The Chatterbox’s great vibe is helped by its frequent antique car shows. They hold them every weekend during the summer, with special evenings for Corvettes and motorcycles. These events are so popular that I’ve seen plates from New York and Pennsylvania, and they have a booth outside grilling hamburgers because the restaurant can’t keep up with feeding all the people there. The amount of vehicles is staggering; they circle the building several times, then spill out into a grassy lot behind the restaurant. I’ve seen Model-Ts, old volkswagens, cadillacs with the wings on the back, antique pickup trucks, and more. They pop the hood on them all so you can marvel at how immaculate the engines are. They make engines look beautiful – nothing like the leaf-laden, black mass beneath a modern car’s hood.

Cars at the Chatterbox

My meal at Osteria Marco covered a lot of bases. I started with burrata, an Italian cheese, then went on to seafood. The dish below is Frutti di Mare or Fruit of the Sea, which is a fitting name because it includes crab, shrimp, calamari, and lobster. All in one dish! It was served cold, with a binding of an aioli (kind of like mayonnaise) and chickpea paste. The red spots are a lobster-and-red-pepper oil.

Frutti de Mare at Osteria Marco

The onions and celery made this almost like a seafood-salad experience, but one that had whole calamari and little tentacles in it. Because it was cold, it reminded me a bit of ceviche, but it wasn’t nearly as acidic as that dish is. The flavor here was mostly in the chickpea binding, because it was hard to distinguish the individual flavors of each specific type of seafood. It was definitely fresh, but not remarkable to me. I didn’t feel like I was eating lobster, or crab, or calamari.

Seafood on a fork

To follow up my seafood, I had.. pizza. It’s an unusual choice to be sure, but this restaurant is famous for their gourmet pizza selection, so I dove in. I wanted to eat something truly unusual, and though I was originally thinking of the Carbonara, which is a pizza with pancetta and egg on it, I ended up with the fig and prosciutto pizza. I like figs, and it seemed vaguely healthy with some fruit on it. (Look, honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking.)

When I look at this picture, I see a normal pizza with cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and maybe sausage or mushrooms. However, those ‘tomatoes’ are actually figs, that cheese is goat cheese and fontina, the brown lumps are caramelized onions, and the shavings are prosciuttio, or pork. Regardless of the ingredients, this is my favorite photo of this set and probably my best pizza photo to date.

Fig and Prosciutto Pizza at Osteria Marco

After eating a whole puck of burrata and a similarly sized serving of the frutti di mare, I was a little too full. The sweetness of the fig was just not the right pairing for those things, either. I didn’t want sweet after the rich, clean taste of cheese, then the briny taste of seafood. I wanted earthy, savory, salty pizza. I should have gotten a sausage pie, basically. Well, I learned a lesson that day – I don’t like sweet pizza.

A slice of gourmet pizza

You may have noticed the above picture seems to have a bite taken out of the crust. I assure you that I did not eat my pizza on the wrong-end, then hastily take a picture of it. Here’s that extra piece of crust on the pie plate. I would like this picture so much more without it; if the white plate was cleaner, this would be a great photo.

See, didn't take a bite out of that slice

Chocolate Nutella Cake at Osteria Marco

I said I was too full to enjoy the pizza, and indeed, I ate about two mini slices and picked at a third. However, nothing would keep me from trying out dessert, so I plowed ahead and ordered this chocolate cake. It’s a hazelnut torte with nutella syrup on the edges and vanilla gelato. I hoped the nutella would make it interesting, or that the hazelnut, a flavor I love, would shine through, but it was your standard dense chocolate cake. The gelato was unremarkable. I left most of this dessert on the plate.

In its defense, I don’t like chocolate cake. I like cake as a general rule, so if I see cake, I’ll order it, but over and over again, I have found that chocolate cake just doesn’t do it for me. It overwhelms all other flavors, it is often dry, and its often served icing- and filling-free. I need to just accept this and stop ordering it but the rest of the menu is often no better. I always want dessert, but never what’s on the menu. Sigh.

Back to the photography, I do like the picture, but wish I had paid more attention to the edge of the table in the upper left corner. I’m pleased with this from a personal perspective, because the light was fading fast when I took this shot, and subsequent photos were blurry, so I am glad this one came through.

Osteria Marco is another restaurant in Denver’s Larimer Square. They focus on casual Italian food, which really means gourmet pizza. The owner has several other restaurants with more upscale tastes, so this one was meant to have a more convivial atmosphere to go with the high-quality food. I don’t know if they really managed that. Denver as a whole is a lot more casual than what I am used to in NYC, and everyone in Larimer was nicely dressed anyway. Yes, people were gabbing and laughing, but I think they would have done so at any other restaurant on the block.

I ordered the burrata as my appetizer. Burrata is a thin skin of mozzarella, filled with a soft mixture of mozzarella and cream. It was invented in Italy partially to get rid of leftover mozzarella. I’ve had it just once before from Whole Foods in NYC. It was freshly made but sat on my desk at work for a few hours, unrefrigerated, and when I got home and tried it, it was creamy but had an underlying bitterness. The cheese is supposed to keep for 24 hours so I wasn’t sure if that was just part of its flavor profile. Osteria Marco’s burrata is made in-house so it was guaranteed to be as fresh as can be.

I really love the wooden slats in this photo; it really changes the tone of the photograph. As you can see, they served the cheese with olive oil and toasted, rustic bread.

Burrata at Osteria Marco

The cheese was topped with pepper, which I adore, and some olive oil. Freshly ground pepper has the most intoxicating smell. I grew up smelling table pepper and, as a result, never added it to anything, but once I got a whiff of toasted peppercorns from a grinder, I was sold.

Burrata with olive oil and pepper

The char on this bread is simply gorgeous. The whole thing has such a delightfully rustic look; the flour dusted on its side, the wide-open crumb, the thick slices. This is the way to serve bread at an Italian place! I don’t even like bread that much.

Rustic bread

I mentioned above that the burrata I had a few months ago was slightly bitter. I braced myself when trying Osteria’s, but it was perfect. Creamy, delightful, clean-tasting. Not a trace of unpleasantness in it. It was much like eating a fresh ricotta or cottage cheese, but with a smoother texture. I’m a sucker for soft, creamy mouthfeels, which is why I love melted cheese, melted icecream, and frosting. This cheese put me in eyes-closed, fully-concentrating-on-this-wonderful-flavor mode, which happens rarely. The only cheese that has done that for me consistently is, curiously, the mozzarella sticks at Johnny Carino’s. (I know that’s lame because it is a chain. The combo of breading, cheese, and that perfect spicy marinara sauce is what gets me, rather than the cheese itself.) I’ve had cheese at Per Se, Thomas Keller’s restaurant, that didn’t speak to me this much.

Burrata on a fork

I love the idea of the burrata on the bread because this bread was just so beautiful, but the hard crunch of the toasted edges paired with the creaminess of the cheese didn’t work for me. I loved this cheese for its texture, and I didn’t want anything obscuring that.

Burrata on toasted bread