Jamie Deen At Home...In His Own Kitchen

Home for Dinner With Jamie Deen

Burgers!

Gazpacho

Deen Burger

One Bowl Chocolate Cake

I really have no idea if this a new show or it’s just on at a different time. We see Jamie with his very cute kid, Jack, baby Matthew and wife, ___??? (I guess wives don’t need names.) Jack seems to be the center of the attention anyway. Daddy asks Jack what he wants for dinner and he says “Cheeseburgers!” Jamie is happy to oblige.

In the kitchen, Jamie takes out an “80/20” mix of ground beef from his butcher. He says using all super lean is no good. He doesn’t take any time to explain what those numbers mean, so I will.

80/20 means that the ground beef is 80% lean and 20% fat. That’s what ground chuck is. Super lean is 93% lean and 7% fat. Obviously, and unfortunately, the more fat, the more flavor. A hamburger that you love will probably be a fattier one.

Having said that, I usually just opt for a veggie burger and put all the good stuff on top, so I don’t even care about the burger itself.

I won’t tell you, oops I just did, about how I had 2, count’em TWO, blue cheese burgers last week and gosh, they were good. In my defense, in neither case did I eat the whole thing. Really! And I don’t even want to think about the lean to fat ratio in those burgers, but they were made with beef from Creekstone farms, so the meat was good! (The funny thing was I thought I was writing about healthy new menu items at Salt Creek Grille and it was the burger that wowed me.)

By the way, the more fat in the burger, the more it shrinks, so you may want to start with a slightly bigger burger if you’re using 80/20 ground beef. Also cheaper meat that’s been “flavor enhanced” shrinks too, because of the solution it’s been injected with.

Oh, maybe “Brooks” is his wife’s name. Not sure.

Jamie adds ¼ cup of chopped (barely) raw onions to his burgers. Good idea. I do that to my meatloaf. OH, then he says (almost as an afterthought) that he uses a Vidalia onion. (Say that with a heavy southern accent). Um, Jamie, you gotta tell us these things in a clearer way. Don’t just mutter Vidalia under your breathe and hope we get it.  There’s all the world of difference between a sweet Georgian Vidalia onion and a pungent, strong Spanish onion. Actually, I think either would be good here, but he’s going for a certain flavor, so he needs to tell us.

Then Jamie gives us his biggest tip. “Don’t overwork your meat.” I’m going to leave that alone.

Wait, he does say he’s not going to “abuse this meat, because it breaks down the fat and that provides the juice and the flavor.” That’s a good rule to live by.

We hear all about little Jack playing baseball. Jamie is the pitcher on the restaurant’s soft ball team and he wears number 21, so Jack wears 21 too. Cute. Although, actually, do they go for that on kids’ baseball teams, where someone requests a special number? Dunno.

Jamie likes to shape the burgers in advance and then refrigerate them, so that when the fire’s ready, he “can go right to work”. He reminds us to press down the center of each burger, since they puff up when they cook. I forgot about that. That is a good tip. He certainly chopped those onions roughly. There are huge bits of onions in the burgers and some have a lot and some have a few.

Jamie says that we “ladies” may be jealous that our men don’t make cakes for us, but he’s going to show us an easy one bowl cake that anyone can make.

I guess it all comes down to what Oprah used to say – “We teach people how to treat us.” My son DOES make me a birthday cake when he’s around. H? Only once in many eons.

Jamie says the kind of cake he's making is called a “dump cake” in the south. That is NOT an attractive name. You just DUMP the ingredients into a bowl and that’s it. He says it takes as long to make it as it takes the oven to preheat, so that’s handy.

This is how Jamie makes the cake. He dumps 2 cups of flour and 2 cups of sugar in the mixer bowl with 1 cup of cocoa powder and baking soda, baking powder and salt.  He says he has a perfect teaspoon measure right here as he pinches together his first three fingers. (I can actually measure a teaspoon pretty accurately in the cupped palm of my hand. That way I can actually SEE how much is there, unlike grabbing a big pinch.)

Jamie melts a stick of butter. I love that he says you might think it’s easier to just buy a box cake, but do you know what’s IN a boxed cake?!! Neither does he, he answers. He says he knows what’s in THIS cake. That’s one of his favorite things about “cooking at the house”.  

(Note to self: In the south, they cook “at” the house, not “in” the house or “at home”.)

Jamie mixes into the dry ingredients 3 eggs with 1 cup of buttermilk, ½ cup warm water, vanilla and the cooled butter. He mixes it super quickly, till there are no dried bits of flour. He Pams his pans and add the batter. I wish he would line his pans with wax paper or parchment. I would never NOT do that. It’s just a bit of insurance.

Oh, his wife is BROOKE, not Brooks. (You never know these days.)

Jamie says a chocolate cake adds a bit of sparkle to their weekdays. He bangs the pans down to remove any air bubbles and bakes them at 350°F for 50 minutes.

His gazpacho recipe comes with a great story, (so he says). Jamie shows us a card from Robert Plante, who LOVED his mother’s gazpacho. After Plante visited their restaurant, Jamie ran to his car to get a CD for him to sign. Robert Plante told Jamie it was the BEST gazpacho he had ever had. When he left, Jamie saw that Plante had left his reading glasses behind. Jamie ran after him and he got four tickets to the next night’s concert as a thank you. At the will-call window…(sorry this story is taking so long, he told it much faster), the person asked, “Who left these tickets for you?” And Jamie said, in an super-loud voice, so EVERYONE could hear, “Robert Plante left me the tickets.”  He took his brother and two babes to the concert and it was great…

Anyhoo, for the gazpacho, he chops up orange peppers, tomatoes and English cucumber. He says to make sure to remove the pepper’s seeds and the cucumber’s skin. He adds one clove of garlic and one small shallot with some salt and pepper. He tastes it for seasoning before he blends it in batches. No vinegar? But I like that he doesn’t add bread or oil.

Oops, in the last blender batch, he adds 1/3 cup olive oil. He also adds sherry vinegar.

Really and truly, you can make great gazpacho without the olive oil. Or just add a tablespoon if you have to OR just float a little bit on the top. But I never add olive oil and then you can feel completely good about having it (along with your fat-laden  blue cheese burgers).

Jamie tastes it and says if you have that with a grilled cheese sandwich, “You will hurt yourself.” I like him.

Two other gazpacho things. I like to finely dice vegetables and serve those as a garnish. And in Spain (and most of the time in my kitchen), gazpacho is strained through a fine sieve. Of course, you’re getting rid of the great-for-you fiber, so it’s fine not to strain it, unless you’re serving Spaniard aristocrats.

For the cake’s icing, Jamie melts a stick of butter and 4 ounces of semisweet chocolate. He takes it off the stove and beats in cocoa powder, vanilla extract and powdered sugar. I like this recipe. He thins out the whole thing with sour cream. That’s a nice recipe. It looks great.

Jamie goes to see his buddy, Randy, at Davis Produce to get some burger toppers in the form of fresh vegetables. He walks out with tomatoes, avocados,  lettuce and Vidalia onions right out of the ground. (Say it with me – “vie-DAY-ee-yuh”.)

Jamie “roasts off” applewood bacon in the oven, so it’s not too “greezy” at 350°F for 12 to 15 minutes. He cooks the burgers on a stove top grill. But then what was that about getting the fire going? He cooks them for 5 or 6 minutes on each side.

Jamie likes that he can control everything his kids eat in his kitchen. That seems to be a recurrent theme. He wants to know what’s in everything he cooks and where the ingredients come from.

That’s the whole point of cooking in your own kitchen “at the house”, isn’t it? That’s why I like the philosophy of basically eating what your grandparents ate (for some of you young’uns, your GREAT grandparents), then you should be okay. Want chocolate cake? Fine, but make it yourself with as many non-processed ingredients as possible. And make it a special treat. Want hamburgers? Okay, but know where the meat comes from and flavor it and handle it yourself. 

Jamie opens the windows while he grills the burgers. He makes a special sauce out of equal parts of mayo, ketchup and yellow mustard. Okay, I know those could be considered processed foods, but you’re eating a tablespoon, not a boatload. I would add some chopped pickles or relish to that. And making your own ketchup is always an option.

As Jamie cooks the burgers, he says he NEVER presses down on any cut or kind of meat that he’s cooking, because he’ll lose the juices and it will dry out and become super-hard. Oh, he’s talking about flattening the burger with the utensil he’s turning it with, NOT touching it for doneness, which he does do. He says a thermometer is the only way to know for sure if it’s done, but he doesn’t bother with that.

He washes all the vegetables and slices them all up. He salts and peppers the tomatoes and wedges up the avocado. He adds cheese to the top of the burgers and then the crisp bacon. He leaves them to sit on the stove-top grill for just a minute to set the juices.

Jamie frosts the cooled cake (which looks a bit concave and doesn't have exactly the most evenly-sized layers I’ve ever seen). But I promise that ANYONE who bakes me a cake will hear only praise…and lipsmacking.

Dinner is served and Brooke has some cake while there’s still a big hamburger on her plate. They have to rush to Jack’s baseball practice, so she’s eating the important thing first. (I approve.)  

                                           

So what about this show? How does it stack up to his mother’s? Well, he’s a lot calmer. He focuses somewhat on good food, but his last name IS Deen, so there had to be a cheeseburger or cheesecake or something.

Did I learn anything? Not really, but I haven’t made a chocolate icing with sour cream in forever and I forgot how good that is. Plus I admire his commitment, stated several times, to cook real food. Not necessarily diet food, but with REAL ingredients (mostly). If you can understand everything on the label, then it’s probably okay, although it’s even better not to HAVE a label.

In general, Jamie is cooking real home-style food that doesn’t break the budget bank of calories with each bite (with a few exceptions). And in those cases, just have SOME, not most of whatever it is.

Jamie cooks in a knowledgeable, rather serene way that is a pleasure to watch. Can’t you always tell the difference between a person whose family cooked and one who is coming to the culinary world without a cooking pedigree? Plus he has years of restaurant experience which shows.

Will I hoot with delight at Jamie's antics? No, but I’ll smile at the fresh, delicious food he produces, with his devotion to his family served up as more than just a side dish. He’s cooking for THEM and that’s what lots of us do every single day (for weeks and months and YEARS)!!! Oy, maybe he’ll take us to Hawaii on the next episode. We could probably both use a break...

Giada Flies A Kite, More About Egg Whites And I Never Realized How Much I Hate Artichoke Hearts, Except Sometimes

Giada At Home with Giada De Laurentiis

Go Fly a Kite

Orzo with Artichoke Pesto and Grilled Corn

Strawberry Meringue Clouds

Gruyere and Spinach Bakes

I finally watched last week’s Giada. Tomorrow she tells us about planning a meal for the royal couple (after their wedding) when they visited California. Forget the menu, I just want to know how she picked what to wear.

Anyway, at the beginning of last week’s show, you know how Giada gives us a silken-voiced rundown of the menu?  Well, as she was describing it, I objected to at least one ingredient in every single dish. Why did her “Gruyere And Spinach Bakes” need a hunk of bread in them? And I love orzo salad…with pesto even better, but why ARTICHOKE pesto? And finally, I don’t need no strawberries IN my meringues. WITH them, fine. SPOONED into a meringue basket, even better, but IN the meringue itself. Weird.

Giada and Todd are taking little Jade to fly a kite on the beach. (Jade is quite beautiful and adorable. I still love that her name is a variation of Giada’s. That is SO sweet.) Giada wants to make a picnic for the outing, which can be easily transported to and eaten on the beach.

She starts with the previously objected to Strawberry Meringues. Immediately, Giada gets off on the wrong foot. She adds salt, saying it counters the sweetness of the sugar. Of all the millions of reasons I’ve heard for adding salt (usually people say it stabilizes the meringue) THAT one was a first. Almost everyone in the world says to add salt, but Rose Levy Beranbaum says not to, so I go with her. I don’t actually add salt to any sweet stuff, which NO ONE agrees with, but I was born this way.  

Anyway, Giada’s other meringue transgression is a common one. She uses a glass bowl to beat her egg whites. She did have a stunning (and pristine white) KitchenAid, which matched the stunning white-only flower arrangement on the countertop.

Now, I’m not going to fault someone who has ONE KitchenAid and it happened to come with a glass bowl instead of a stainless steel one. BUT Giada could have chosen any machine on the planet.

I get more and more anxious as I see the egg whites falling down the slippery sides of the bowl back onto themselves, instead of steadily increasing in height. Is it fatal to use glass? No. But you absolutely positively will not get the same volume in a glass bowl as you will in a stainless steel one.

Once in your life, at least, you have to know the elation of beating eggs in a copper bowl. It’s tough and requires some muscle (well, endurance at least), but those egg whites are beauteous. Plus it’s pretty hard to overbeat egg whites when you’re doing it by hand. Actually, that’s not an issue here, because in addition to adding salt (bad), Giada also adds cream of tartar (good). That allows the egg whites NOT to be overbeaten and so it’s a great addition when using a stand mixer particularly. (Don’t add cream of tartar when using a copper bowl to beat whites. Also don’t add it if you’re not cooking the egg whites.)

FYI, here are RLB’s latest pronouncements on beating egg whites.

                                  

So…..Giada gets her meringues beaten, although not as high and fluffy as I would have liked and then she adds some lemon zest! Really? In all my millions of times making meringue, I NEVER thought of adding lemon zest. What a superb idea! I’m thinking about the countless meringue baskets I’ve made with lemon curd filling (SO good) and how wonderful it would have been to have added lemon zest to those meringues. OY! How could I not have thought of that?!! BTW, she says that lemon JUICE would have deflated the whites.

Then Giada talks about adding strawberries. She says that fresh strawberries would weigh the meringues down and discolor them, so she adds freeze-dried strawberries. My word! Who would have thunk of that? In principle, it makes sense, but I still don’t need my meringues littered with dried strawberries.  I get that the texture would match the chewy inside of the meringue, but leave my meringue alone. Adding nuts, cocoa, even making them with brown sugar? Great. But fruit belongs on the outside of a meringue.

Notwithstanding the fact that I don’t like what’s IN the meringues, I’m super–impressed with how she gets them on the baking sheet. Giada uses an ice cream scoop to place mounds of the meringue mixture on the baking sheet. Really? How ingenious!

I have 3 sizes of ice cream scoops - for shaping everything from cookies; sweet breads like banana bread, especially in mini loaf tins; ice cream or sorbet; meat balls; chocolate truffles…but I have never ever used them for meringues. A piping bag is my usual weapon of choice. I like this idea A LOT, especially for the shape she’s making, which is kind of dome-like.

Giada uses parchment paper to line her baking sheets. I always bake meringues on foil, because it’s easier to take them off even if there’s some weeping. Sometimes they stick to the parchment. Giada bakes the meringues at 200°F for two hours and then lets them sit in a turned-off oven to cool completely.

We see the finished meringue clouds. They look amazing. I’m sure they’re perfectly crisp with all that long slow baking. Even the strawberry bits look good, but I’m still leaving them out.

She grates gruyere (by hand) for the “Spinach Bakes”, which seem like little quiches without the crust. Actually, they’re just like savory bread puddings, so I guess the bread ISN’T out of place.

Giada sautés 2 ounces of pan-chitta and cools it down a bit. She slices two (enormous) shallots and sautés them in some olive oil. Next she whisks 6 room temperature eggs with ¼ cup of whole milk plus some salt and pepper. She adds the cheese and 2 (huge) slices of country bread, which have been cubed. 2 cups of chopped baby spinach go into the custard with the shallots and the pan-chitta. (Interesting that she doesn’t blanch the spinach first.)

She fills four 10 ounce oiled ramekins with the mixture and bakes them at 400°F for 25 minutes. I would be tempted to make these in mini muffin pans, in which case, you’d really have to make sure you cubed the bread small.

Through magic, we see the ramekins as they’re baking. Gosh, they look awesome. Crispy, crusty, turning a gorgeous brown and bubbling with the cheese, studded with little pieces of pan-chitta, they look beautiful. She unmolds them.

For the last dish, Giada grills corn for the orzo salad. She coats the corn with oil and heavily grills it on top of the stove.

Giada cooks the orzo in heavily salted water. She adds some frozen and thawed artichoke hearts to the food processor.

Hold it a second. I really do like just about everything (well, not tarragon and not oranges with chocolate), but artichoke hearts - except from a fresh artichoke -  just do not do it for me.

I don’t want to insult anyone’s hot artichoke dip, but to me it’s just an excuse to eat glop on a chunk of bread. Forget the artichokes and I’ll just eat the mayo or pimento cheese, or cream cheese or whatever else goes into it by itself.

Anyway, Giada’s plan is to make pesto from artichoke hearts. C’mon, really, truly, does anyone really like that? It’s funny because there’s nothing better (okay, that’s NOT true, but you know what I mean) than a fresh artichoke heart, dipped in melted butter. Mmmm.  Let’s just let the artichoke BE the artichoke. 

Giada adds ½ cup of toasted walnuts, ½ cup of the most gorgeous parsley you’ve ever seen, fresh oregano (Ina thinks it’s too strong to be used fresh), lemon zest and juice. Giada doesn’t say this but you need the lemon juice to prevent the artichoke hearts from turning unattractively brown. She also adds garlic, salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil to the food processor. Giada whirls it around and tastes it for seasoning and pretends to really like it. It looks so grey and unappetizing. The color of normal pesto (without artichokes) is one of its strong suites. It’s vibrant and fresh and green. THIS is not THAT.

Giada uses a big oval scooper to drain the orzo. I know she has a cookware line to promote, but this scooper is really better for larger pasta pieces. Is she REALLY going to stand there and scoop out every grain of orzo from the hot steaming pot, when she could just drain the whole thing in 3 seconds?

Giada says it’s okay to have some of the pasta water sticking to the orzo (and she won’t be able to help that – the way she’s draining it), but is this really a dish that requires pasta water like many sauced ones do? I guess I shouldn’t care that so much orzo could be left in the bottom of the pot. The less orzo that gets bathed in that greyish green mess the better. I had no idea how much I hated artichoke hearts used this way until now.

Giada scoops the nasty looking pesto onto the orzo and stirs it with a kind of gushy, mushy sound. Then she chops up a few leftover grey artichoke  hearts and adds those to the salad along with the grilled corn kernels, which have been cut from the core. She adds halved cherry tomatoes to “bring the salad to life”. (Something needs to.) Giada adds lots of grated cheese. She tastes it and says “heaven”. I don’t buy it.

By the way, if you want an amazing orzo dish that is one of the BEST DISHES IN THE WORLD (and not just the best ORZO dish, but one of the best dishes of ANY KIND) look here.

Giada and Todd go to the beach with little Jade. They run after her while Jade flies a beautiful butterfly kite. What a cute kid. They like the gruyere thingies. Todd says the orzo is excellent. They do cheers with the meringue clouds. Jade seems to have a problem biting into the meringues, but Giada shares her bitten-off one with her little girl. Sweet and 2 out of 3 dishes ain’t bad. Just forget those strawberry bits.

OH, I just remembered a million ways that I DO love artichokes. Usually in any dish where they’re called alcachofas, which means they’ll be cooked in a wonderful Spanish style. They'll often be fried in olive oil and garlic with a little jamon and served piping hot. They might be baby artichokes that are halved lengthwise with the stem still on, so there’s a long tender, sweet stem leading to a crunchy crispy flower end. REALLY good.

Father's Day Fun

I hope you all had fun celebrating Father’s Day. I couldn't be with my father, but look at the neat banner I got him from Banners On The Cheap. I highly recommend them for all your banner needs.

You can design your own banner or use their designs. And they’re having a special promotion where you can get a FREE 2 feet by 5 feet July 4th banner and you just pay the shipping. Here’s the special offer link. Click on any banner, which you can customize with any wording and your own picture, which I did.

For the father of my kids (H in other words), I made a version of Tandoori Chicken, which I started marinating the day before. 24 hours of sitting in a wonderfully spiced-up yogurt sauce does give it loads of flavor, but even 3 or 4 hours would be okay. 

I cooked the chicken in a hot oven and then broiled it at the end, but you could barbecue it; cook it on an inside grill; cook it entirely by broiling; or even sauté it in a hot pan. Unlike traditional Tandoori cooking where cooking the food in the hot Tandoor oven is the hallmark of the dish, here the marinade is the thing.

I also made these Dry Fried Potatoes, which are basically boiled potatoes (leftover ones work just fine), fried with lots of added spices and flavors. 

  

In addition to the chicken, I also marinated a sliced onion and then cooked it with the chicken. It makes a nice addition to the cooked chicken breast.

Father’s Day Tandoori Chicken (serves 2 to 3)

Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s Tandoori Chicken in An Invitation to Indian Cooking

Printable recipe here.

4 boneless chicken breasts

1 medium onion, sliced

For Marinade:

1 small onion, chopped roughly

3 tbls. lemon juice

2 cloves garlic, peeled center stem removed and chopped roughly

½” piece of ginger, peeled and chopped roughly

1 cup plain yogurt

1 tbl. cumin

1 tsp. coriander

1 tsp. turmeric

¼ tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. paprika

¼ tsp. cayenne

½ tsp. Kosher salt

Cut 3 or 4 deep slashes in each chicken breast and set aside. Place sliced onion in little bowl. Set aside.

Place onion, lemon juice, garlic, ginger and a few spoonfuls of the one cup of yogurt in blender. Blend until you have a smooth paste. If you need a tablespoon or so of water to get the blender going, that’s fine.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, add the remaining yogurt and all the spices and seasonings. Stir well to mix. Pour blender contents into yogurt mixture and mix well.

Remove about 2 tablespoons of the marinade mixture and add to sliced onion. Cover and refrigerate until ready to cook.

Add chicken to marinade and stir around well, making sure the yogurt mixture gets into the slashes. Cover and refrigerate for up to 24 hours. Turn the chicken pieces over a few times if you remember.

Place the chicken on a foil-lined baking sheet. Leave as much marinade clinging to the breast as possible.

Lift the sliced onion out of its marinade (a fork is good for this) and place on the same baking sheet as the chicken.

Bake in a preheated 400°F oven for 20 minutes. Finish by broiling until the top is well browned. Or grill, broil or sauté until chicken is cooked. Cook until chicken and onions are browned. 

Dry Fried Potatoes with Onions (serves 3)
Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s “Dry” Potatoes with Onions in An Invitation to Indian Cooking
Printable recipe here. 

6 Yukon gold potatoes, cut in half crosswise

1 tsp. mustard seeds (preferably black, but yellow is okay)

1 tsp. cumin seeds

1 tsp. poppy seeds OR 1 tsp. sesame seeds (black or white)

3 tbls. vegetable or olive oil

1 onion, sliced

½ tsp. Kosher salt
2 tsps. ground cumin

¼ tsp. cayenne

juice of 1 lemon
garnish: chopped parsley 

Place potatoes in cold water. 

Bring to boil and allow to simmer about 20 minutes or until potatoes are cooked. Don’t overcook. Drain and cool.

Heat oil over medium heat. Cook mustard, cumin and poppy or sesame seeds for one minute. 

 

Stir in onion and cook for 4 minutes. 

Turn heat down to low and stir in salt, cumin and cayenne. Cook for 3 minutes.

Cut each potato half into 4 pieces. Add them to the onions. 

Cook for 6 or 7 minutes on medium heat, without stirring, to get one side well-browned. Turn potatoes and continue cooking another 15 minutes, stirring once or twice, until they're nicely browned. 

Add the lemon juice and taste for seasoning. Sprinkle with parsley and serve hot. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

I also grilled some pizza dough to serve as "naan". 

I also made a quick raita, which is drained plain yogurt with cucumbers and lots of cumin.

Eating Down South Part 2 - Tennessee

Tennessee offers some great dining possibilities, especially when you’re with exuberant gastronomes like M and R. 

Downtown Knoxville is full of great things to do (and eat). Café 4 (for lunch with M) had really excellent pulled pork tacos.

Luckily, we ordered a “small plate” of three tacos to split along with some LOBSTER mac and cheese. 

The portions were definitely cowboy-sized. We loved the tacos, although the mac and cheese was a bit bland. It was okay though, because we had the best seat in the house, looking out onto Market Square in the center of Knoxville.


Sweetwater, Tennessee is a sweet little town. The downtown area is only about 2 streets long and one street across and M and I went into quite a few of their shops:

Bobby Todd

Picket Fence Galleries & Antiques

Cones Cupboard

AND The Paris Apartment for lunch and browsing.

Look how pretty The Paris Apartment is:

Two more amazing meals:


Cru features little plates with a cuisine that spans French, Asian and Southern. Because our host is a wonderfully enthusiastic diner (most of my friends ARE), we ordered MANY dishes. 

We had THREE rounds of four dishes each and every dish I chose came in last (VERY uncharacteristically) in our unofficial voting. I think that just meant that EVERYTHING was so good that something had to be on the bottom.
 

Let's see what I can remember: 

The chicken and waffles (picture too blurred to include) is my idea of a party on a plate. I really liked this little taste, even if the waffle was a bit overcooked and too crusty. It made me want to get a full plate of Chicken and Waffles somewhere that specializes in that. (The drive would have been a bit long.)

The salad in the duck confit salad was good, but the duck wasn’t as flavorful as it could have been.

The pizza was one of the best dishes of the night and thank goodness there were four of to eat that whole pizza plus SEVEN other dishes.

Very nice crab cake. It was sitting on a fried green tomato.

I was told by our southern friends that the shrimp and grits were good. I think this must not be my favorite dish. I like my cornmeal mush with lots of parmesan a la polenta. And I shocked them by saying that if I ever had to have grits for breakfast, I’d have them with lots of syrup. They were appalled and said butter and salt is the way to go. 

The seared scallop was perfectly cooked and served with a huge onion ring. THAT’S the way to my heart.

I loved the fish taco. The fish was coated in panko and served in a naan with a cilantro chimichurri and spicy mayo. Yum!  

And our last meal was at a lovely country spot, Dancing Bear Lodge.

It's the “sister” resort to Blackberry Farm. It’s in an impressive, but cozy, log restaurant (and hotel) with a much more down-home menu than Blackberry Farm. But it still uses a lot of their local produce and products.

Several (dancing?) bears greet you at the front door. Well, actually, their backs are turned as they hold on to the top of the huge pole holding up the roof of the porch. I hope they don’t let go.

 

 

 



We ordered “snacks for the table”.



Spicy Black-Eyed Pea Hummus, Pimento Cheese and Smoked Trout Rillette were all served in jam jars. Cute. The rillette was superb. I love that stuff. It’s a thick, paste-like spread, often made from pork. This was GOOD. The corn muffins (and cheese?) were freshly made and delicious.

I loved the Truffled Corn and Crab Chowder. The corn was sweet and the hint of truffle (oil?) was delicious with the crab.




I ordered the Sweet Tea Brined Pork Tenderloin with Corn Maque Choux. I didn’t get much of a sweet tea taste, but it was homey and filling. I liked the Maque Choux - slow simmered corn with onions and cream. The crockery was pretty too.




Dessert, unfortunately, was a bit of a disappointment.


The Brown Sugar Pound Cake was nothing to write home about. It was rubbery. The entire dessert menu was a bit lackluster. It was as if the chef had run out of gas. Especially in comparison to Blackberry Farm, which probably isn’t fair, the last course fell down. BUT the grounds are lovely and they have lots of cabins as well. There are huge kayaking and tubing opportunities nearby (AND antique shops!).

It’s always fun visiting friends. The only downside? They live SO far away that we can’t just stop by any time. So I have to look at my pictures (and millions of plates) and reminisce about all the delectable meals, great shopping and being with best buddies.

Eating Down South Part 1 - South Carolina

Probably every part of the country has ample opportunity for great eating and that is certainly true of the areas around Knoxville, Tennessee and Greenville, South Carolina. Luckily, in addition to being great at traipsing around old dishes and other stuff, the friends we visited are excellent cooks AND eaters. 

A and I visited the beautiful Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina.

Grove Park Inn

Massive fireplace

We had lunch outside on a gorgeous covered terrace overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains. We had the best table imaginable and whether it was perfectly pre-arranged or just fate is not important. 

 

The whole place is just stunning. 

The spa is under that glass ceiling.

We split 2 dishes, which I love to do at restaurants I haven't been to. Come to think of it, I also like to do that at places I've been to a million times before. I like that they brought the dishes already split and beautifully plated, which we appreciated.

The Crab Cake Club couldn't have been better. A crab cake AND bacon? It was too good. The house-made potato chips were excellent too. 

We also loved the Lobster Cobb Salad.

There were big chunks of lobster. And somehow bacon found its way into THIS dish too, along with chopped hard boiled eggs and fried shallots, which were a different touch. It was nicely dressed. (I am not a fan of dressing on the side. I don’t order salads in restaurants to have to dress them myself!)  

Dessert sounded and tasted good, but it wasn’t the most magnificent looking.

  

The Coconut Cuatro Leches was a meringue sponge cake soaked in four (count 'em) FOUR milks...as in CUATRO leches. I'm guessing they were condensed milk, evaporated milk, heavy cream and coconut milk. That really does sound good.

For another lunch, we went to this little cool restaurant, Zenzera, in downtown Landrum (South Carolina). 

       

We split a great chicken salad sandwich. Look how yummy:

Here, too, they also plated half portions for us, so we didn't have to worry about splitting it ourselves. How friendly these southerners are! We left room for dessert (since when isn’t there?)

This cake looked so good, but it wasn’t my fav. 

   

It was chocolate (what could be wrong with that?), but with a key lime filling. It was weird.  

This coffee was awesome!

It was Z’s Turtle Mocha – espresso, steamed milk, chocolate, caramel AND whipped cream. Honestly, it looked better than it tasted (the coffee itself wasn't great), but I managed to choke it down. 

A and I also went to the Greenville’s fabulous Greek Festival.

We snuck in some window (actually stall) shopping too.

  

And we visited the very beautiful St. George’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral.

There is a magnificent mosaic at the top of the nave’s domed ceiling. It covers 1,400 square feet and contains many thousands of tiled pieces. It was created by a Greek iconographer and his Albanian wife, a mosaic artist.
    

Luckily, visiting the beautiful cathedral made up for the disappointing main course of our lunch. We had chicken souvlaki that was more dried out than tender.

However, the fresh lemonade was superb and each and every cup had a fresh lemon half floating in it. 

We tried four different Greek pastries.

The Baklava was okay, but the Galatoboureko at the top left (I just like saying the name) was delicious. Who wouldn’t love pastry cream-filled phyllo?  νοστιμότατος. The Amygthalota (almond-covered almond cookie) also was a winner, although I could take or leave the Kourambiedes (the powdered sugar covered butter cookie).

Baklava

Kourambiedes (left)and Galatoboureko 

Baklava and Amygthalota

And with that I’ll say, αντίο, until we meet again in the great state of Tennessee…