I’m Polish, but I grew up in an Italian town so I didn’t actually eat a lot of it growing up. I now seek out Polish food when I can as an adult but… preferisco la cucina italiana. We had frozen Mrs. T’s pierogies, kielbasionce in awhile, and “Polish hot dogs”. Oh, gods, they were awful. They were greasy and an angry red color, so far from the paler color and milder flavor of a hot dog. When I ate it, I was always disappointed, because I wanted a hot dog, or a kielbasa, or, heck, even an Italian sausage, but not this heavy, oily, wrinkled thing.

See how wrinkly it is?

Pierogies were just alright. They were frozen and boiled back to life. However, for my high school graduation party,  my parents got some authentic food from a Polish market, including pierogies. Some were filled with farmer’s cheese, which I had never had before. They were amazing. I still remember how good they were, and I’m always a little disappointed when I find a place that’ll serve me pierogies but only potato ones because farmer’s cheese is now the gold standard in my mind.

I visited my mother for a barbecue this summer, and she happened to have some pierogies left over from a recent visit to a Polish market. They had potato, cheesy potato, and farmer’s cheese.

Mom: “Oh, do you want some pierogies before we fire up the grill?”

Me: “YES.”

Mom: “Okay. Butter, with onions?”

Me: “YES.”

This is what she gave me. Lusciously browned pierogies with caramelized onions, glistening in butter.

Pierogies with farmer's cheese

The cheese-filled ones were indeed delicious. Farmer’s cheese is an unripened cheese; almost all cheeses need to sit for several days to several years to get their particular flavors. In this case, you stop after adding the rennet and just squeeze out the moisture. Then you eat it! The variation that is placed inside pierogies is usually crumbly, like ricotta gets after it is baked. It adds a tangy, nutty counterpart to the pierogies, butter, and onions, sort of like a counterpoint that cuts through the richness.

Pierogies close up

If you wanted a pure comfort-food experience, pierogies with cheesy potatoes are probably for you. The insides are soft, carby, cheesy, and indulgent. If this is your thing, check out the recipe at the end of the post.

Pierogies

That brings me to the kielbasa. She had some of that, too. I liked it growing up, even the supermarket variety, and I’ll still eat that even today. I always preferred to eat it cold in slices, too. I’m not sure if that’s unusual. Anyone else eat it like that?

Kielbasa on a plate

So, are you jonesing for some pierogies now? Someone on the Facebook page mentioned something called pierogi casserole. I kind of imagined a layered dish of pierogies, but I was completely incorrect. It’s actually a deconstructed pierogi; you layer lasagna noodles with mashed potatoes, cheese, and onions. Man, that sounds just full of carbohydrates! And so soft you barely have to chew.. I can see how some people would love it. Apparently, it is sometimes called Polish lasagna. And we’re riiiight back to Italian food.

Basic recipe for pierogi casserole

Pierogi casserole with bacon, garlic, and sour cream

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

Continuing my posts about the Fort, a historic restaurant in the hills outside of Denver, we arrive at my entree, the Game Plate. It was a bison filet, an elk steak, and a teriyaki quail. I was on a quest to eat things that I would not be able to easily find in New Jersey or New York, you see. I also love good steak but never order it out for dieting reasons. Since I was on vacation, I was splurging all over the place.

Please forgive the slightly lower quality; I was seated a few feet from a window in a dark building, and the sun was going down. Out of courtesy, I never use flash in a restaurant. These low-light photos were taken with my wonderful Mark II 50mm Canon lens that is amazingly only $90.

The elk chop is the larger cut on top. It was great! This was the most meat I’ve eaten in one sitting in literally years, period, because even when we eat it at home, I limit myself to 5 oz. The flavor and texture were wonderful. Sometimes gamey meat has a bad connotation to it but there was nothing ‘off’ or ‘rancid’ or ‘vegetal’ about the flavor that I recall.

Steaks at the Fort

That bird sticking out is a quail in teriyaki sauce. It’s a wee bird for sure. I never eat non-breast chicken so this, too, was an unusual feat for me, and I wasn’t quite sure how to eat it, so I tore it apart with my fork. I think that’s a good sign, as it was very tender, but this property might have do with how small a quail is. There was never more than an inch thickness of meat at any given point. The teriyaki sauce was good but I imagined it overshadowed any unique flavors of the quail. However, I thought this was tasty, and I’d eat it again.

The photo makes me laugh because it’s like the quail is the wicked witch in the wizard of oz. An elk steak fell on it instead of a house.

Quail and Elk steak in the Fort's Game Plate

I love rare meat, as it has more flavor and juiciness to me. I prefer the meltingly soft texture of a rare cut to the stringy texture of something well-done. The bison was, as you can see, quite rare, and I was pretty pleased. It’s also a lean meat – bison is low fat and in fact does not have the same ‘marbled’ property as beef at all.

Piece of bison steak

So there I was, a young woman in a dress, sitting alone, eating two appetizers, a salad, and a plate of game, to be followed by two desserts, most of which I didn’t eat. This young woman also had a camera and a bag of lenses.

Now, it’s not unusual, in the Tristate area (NJ, PA, NY), to have a manager come over to your table once in awhile and ask how you are. I have been asked that many times when I did not have a camera on me. When my waiter and then a manager asked me how my meal was, I thought that was normal.

Then the owner came over.

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When I was researching restaurants with a view for my Denver trip, I read about The Fort in Morrison, Colorado. I was lucky to have stumbled upon this list because I hadn’t been looking at places in Boulder, Morrison, Aurora, and other surrounding towns. The Fort is in the foothills of the Rockies, a few miles from Red Rock Amphitheatre. It has its own slab of red rock, and it’s built entirely out of adobe mud to look like a trading post that stood on the same site in 1846.

The Fort has decided to live up to its rich history by serving game that is local to Colorado. As soon as I saw elk, rattlesnake, quail, buffalo, and other meats on the menu, I was sold. I got there at 6:00 and hoped to park at a Denver-facing window until sunset.

To start, I had a mint julep in a mason jar. I’ve never had one, but the Great Gatsby made them sound awesome, so I gave it a try. It had French brandy, peach brandy, and some mint. I’m not much of a drinker so it was a little strong for me, but I felt pretty cool drinking from a jar, having never done that before.

Old-fashioned mint julep in a mason jar

They didn’t have rattlesnake on the menu that day, which I found deeply disappointing. I replaced it with beef tongue, which sounded strange and therefore interesting. It was extremely soft and tender; it literally melted in your mouth. When you took a bite out of it on the toast, it just pulled apart. However, it was all texture; because it was sliced so thin, it didn’t have a lot of beefy flavor. I don’t know what I expected. All I know about beef tongue is a scene in a Ramona/Judy Bloom book.

I am pleased with this picture because I was seated a few feet from the window and already starting to have lighting problems because of the setting sun. A good sharpening in my graphics program helped out a lot.

Beef tongue from The Fort

The other appetizer I had planned for was indeed available that evening: Rocky Mountain Oysters. For those unacquainted, they are beef testicles. This preparation breaded and fried them, which I am told is common. I actually never eat fried things if I can help it, both for health reasons and a deep loathing for getting grease on my hands or face. This means no fried chicken, chicken nuggets, deep fried turkey/poptarts/twinkies, etc. I do eat French fries and the occasional mozzarella stick, though, so I gave these a try.

Fried Rocky Mountain Oysters

This is the inside of one. It’s pale, right? Like dark meat chicken? That’s what it tasted like. (Ironic, right?) It didn’t taste like beef — just meat and iron. I ate a few with the provided salsa but I didn’t care for them. It was like eating chicken nuggets. I hoped for something more revolutionary. I mean, it’s a testicle!  I should note, too, that both of these appetizers were half portions because I was eating by myself.

Rocky Mountain Oysters

I followed that with a jicama and pumpkin seed salad with a damiana vinaigrette. Damiana is an herb native to Mexico, and it smelled extremely familiar when I was eating it. I later found out it is used in teas and some people liken it to chamomile which might explain it. It was a nice dressing — the herbal notes really upped the vegetation factor of the salad. I want to eat a salad to eat plants, not chicken, cheese, tortilla strips, or wontons, and the damiana vinaigrette really cements that experience.

This is my favorite salad photo ever. I like the white light in the background, the shape of the bowl, the luminescence of the leaves, and the overall framing of the shot. I can see why a lot of food photographers style with light behind the subject, though I think it gets boring after awhile.

Salad

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

Rioja is one of many small, hip restaurants in Denver’s historic Larimer Square area. It’s well-reviewed, so I thought I’d eat there, and when I looked at the menu, the homemade donuts definitely sold me on brunch. It’s supposedly Mediterranean food, but I did not get that vibe from the brunch menu. It had some pasta but also some curry and other Indian influences, as well as tuna nicoise, and, well, waffles. This isn’t a bad thing – it’s simply not your typical Italian place.

I knew I’d be taking pictures so I sat outside in the direct sunlight, right around the hottest part of the day. It was somewhere between 90-100 degrees in Denver. My iPhone was soon coffee-cup hot, I was occasionally touching my water glass to my face, and you can see what happened to my butter. For the record, the bread they gave me with it — one lavender-flavored, one studded with olives — was pretty nice.

Butter in the summer in Denver

The donuts. Oh, the donuts. Freshly made donuts, made by anyone, are delicious. They’re hot, doughy, and comforting. These donuts were filled with lemon curd and mascarpone, the creamy cheese they use in tiramisu. I’m a sucker for lemon curd, and the combination here was excellent; decadent, creamy, velvety texture, cutting down the acidity of the lemon so you get a bright, but gentle taste of melt-in-your-mouth goodness.

Homemade donuts from Rioja

Did I mention the melt-in-your-mouth goodness? Because these donuts were hot from the oven, the filling was a delightful stream of yellow that I loved to mop up with the donut. The one downside was that eating these were messy. I had that powdered sugar all over my fingers and mouth. It was a fun, whimsical messy, though. It was the mess of eating something truly enjoyable.

I experimented with adding a fork to my photos to style them a little better. One can’t rely on macro shots alone, right?

Homemade donut with melty lemon filling

They also kindly provided some blueberry compote for you to add to your donut. I tried spooning some into the donut, dipping the donut into it, and then just eating it off the plate, mixed with the remnants of the lemon curd mascarpone. It’s an interesting choice because blueberries are tart like lemons are, and it balances out the pillowy decadence of the donut itself. I didn’t need the blueberries, personally, because the lemon flavor was enough for me, but I can see what they were going for. As an aside, I like this photo because it’s like it is a waterfall of blueberries, slowly spilling towards you.

Blueberry compote

Those were so delicious, I was pretty much full and finished, but I had my ‘entree’ coming out. Yes, those donuts were just ‘starters’. To get something both healthy and interesting-sounding, I selected a dungeness crab crepe, filled with asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, and crab, then topped with black truffle hollandaise sauce. Sounds fancy, but they look pretty normal, right? It’s the hollandaise – I realize it’s a cornerstone of French sauces, but it’s bright yellow. I just can’t take it seriously. I also didn’t taste the truffle flavor at all, and all in all, eating an egg-and-butter sauce after those donuts was just too much richness for me.

Asparagus, crab, and shiitake mushroom crepes

I ended up just eating the inside of the crepes, which were very light. The asparagus added some crunch to the soft crab, and the mushrooms brought some earthiness to shindig. They were generous with the amount of crab, and overall, I thought this was a good combination of flavors. I just wish I hadn’t had the donuts before it.

Asparagus, crab, and shiitake on a fork

I haven’t been going to as many farmer’s markets as I’d like this year. They hold one every Wednesday in my town in the afternoon, but it ends at 6 which is precisely when I get off my train after work. I’ve recently been to one in nearby Montclair which was fun; I got two delicious cider donuts, some ras el hanout (a Moroccan spice of cinnamon, clove, cardamom, coriander, etc), and a few sugar plums. Yes, sugar plums really exist, and people grow them! They actually weren’t as sweet as I anticipated from the name.

Here is a bounty of peppers. The pale green ones on the left are cubanelles, a sweet variety.  The very slender green and red ones on the right are chile peppers. I didn’t know that until I looked it up – I assumed they were super long and wrinkled jalapenos. I also didn’t know that apparently red and purple peppers are just ripened green peppers. The longer you let the pepper sit on the vine, the more color it takes on; however, that means  a longer time-to-market and a diminished capacity for making pepper seeds, so letting peppers ripen to other colors is more expensive.

Peppers at a farmer's market

That round, purple vegetable is a Rosa Bianca eggplant. I wish I had known that when I took this picture. Rosa Biancas are Italian heirloom eggplants that are creamy, mildly-flavored, and have no bitterness. If I knew such an eggplant existed, I would have bought it in a second; I love when my eggplant gets all creamy and squishy after a long braise in tomato sauce. If there is no sauce, I definitely taste the bitterness. I try to salt it out, but I don’t think I give it enough time. This variety sounds like a great solution to both issues. Probably good in a stir-fry. This is why I need to go to more markets – to try out awesome produce like this before the season ends.

Eggplant at a farmer's market

And this is what we get after we buy the vegetables. Oh, how I love sauteed squash. I grew up in a house that only ate canned vegetables, so my first taste of sauteed squash happened in a college cafeteria. It was love at first bite. This dish came from La Taverna, an Italian restaurant in Dayton, NJ that serves some pretty tasty food in a nice historic setting.

Sauteed veggies at La Taverna

I love the char and the speckled pattern on the zucchini.

Sauteed squash at La Taverna

Rosa Mexicano is a Mexican restaurant in Lincoln Center in New York City. I’ve been there several times because I used to work nearby, and it was our go-to team-lunch location. They make a decent guacamole, table-side, but their lunch menu is a little small and uninteresting. I’ve had every single one of their salads, and I disliked them all. Their dinner menu looks rad, though — duck tortilla? I am in.

On this particular day, Lou had a chicken quesadilla with some more of that guacamole and a bit of fresh pica de gallo. They used Chihuahua cheese (it’s a place in Mexico — no dogs were milked in the making of this dish) instead of the typical Monterrey.

Chicken quesadilla from Rosa Mexicano's

I love how colorful pico de gallo is, compared to the more uniform crimson of pureed salsa. I am always so confused when I get salsa that is basically soup – I want it to have big chunks in it and basically look like this pico de galla but with less yellow.

Quesadilla with guacamole

This next dish is Mole de Xico, pronounced hee-co, like the last part of the word Mexico. Xico is a city in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Interestingly, this dish was called Mole de Xico but the sauce was called Veracruz mole.  I was drawn to this enchilada dish because the mole has everything I like about the world; fruit, raisins, and ancho chiles, which to me, taste, well, like raisins. The actual ingredient list is raisins, plantains, hazelnuts, pine nuts, ancho chiles, pasilla chiles, and mulato chiles. Yes, please. It was pretty smoky, spicy, and earthy, but when paired with beef tortillas — that lump hiding in the middle — it was just confusing. It didn’t taste ‘savory’ enough to my palate.

Beef enchilada with Mole de Xico

Looking at this picture, I’d still eat it again.

Veracruz mole from Rosa Mexicano

This is an asparagus and avocado salad from a completely different Mexican place in a completely different state – Pennsylvania. I didn’t like this New Hope eatery, nor did I like this salad, or any of the other pictures I took there. However, I thought this was a good photo so I have included it.

Avocado and asparagus salad

These dishes were the entrees from my lunch at the Highlawn Pavilion a few years ago. My mother ordered the steak, and it was pretty tasty. It looks so plain, right? You’d expect them to get fancier with it, but I guess they know they don’t have to. I don’t think the people ordering it are after strange sauces and foam. Even when I ate at Per Se, they kept this dish extremely simple, to their benefit.

Steak and potatoes, Highlawn-style

Can you find three types of potatoes in this picture?

I ordered the fish in an attempt to be healthy. My significant other also hates all seafood so I can only get it at a restaurant. This was Striped Bass, which I had much higher expectations for. Those disks are purple Peruvian potatoes. I have no idea what it is garnished with — is that marjoram? Young oregano? Clover from the lawn? Help  me out. Anyway, I don’t remember eating this, and my notes at the time were ‘just average’.

Striped Bass at Highlawn Pavilion

My mother is low-carbing due to her upcoming wedding, so I took her to a seafood place, Blue Water Seafood Company, for Mother’s Day. The fish was rumored to be excellent, but it’s hard not to get lobster if you have the choice. She got a ~2.5 lb lobster, and I a smaller 1.5 lber. They serve it with flare. Look, he has a lemon fedora. I think it is a small blessing that the lobster itself is out of focus because, having looked at a lobster in a macro lens that day, I think I’d rather spare you the experience. A close up picture of the lobster’s face is after the jump if you think you can handle it.

He tasted delicious. The meat came right out – no digging around to pull it out. I wish I ordered a bigger one.

Lobster dinner at Blue Water Seafood Company.

These potatoes accompanied it, but who wants to eat anything but lobster?

Roasted potatoes

These clams were delicious; very meaty and served with both broth and butter. I’d definitely recommend Blue Water Seafood Company (what a mouthful) for the quality of its fish, but it is pretty pricey. I guess good clams are gonna cost you.

Steamed clams

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