Viking Prince's Hole in the Wall Dining

[Viking Prince]

The plan as I outlined to Meg:

The basic idea is food. Everyday food. Good food.

I am thinking a thread on neighborhood hole in the wall restaurants. Not that the world will come to Denver, but for me as well as others to post their experiences. Not simply a set of reviews, but more of the flavor of differant ethnic restaurants, why the local small hole in the wall ones are worth exploring, etc.

Another thread would be on recipes and dinners that one can make at a 'hole' for everyday and actual company. Nothing fancy or Martha Stewartish -- but still good enough to be worth doing.

Another thread would be on exploring the local ethnic grocers. What to buy in them versus the big box grocery stores.

What do you think?

btw - I do not plan to post less often than once a week as a minimum standard, but I will make posts as it suits the mood and occasion. My past careers have included everything from major hotel dining management, serving/hosting/asst manager of Village Inns and a failed but crazy attempt at my own neighborhood hole in the wall. I am certain stories will pop up to spice things a bit.

I like to both make at home and to go out for sandwiches. The key is planning and good bread. For the home, I try to have one roast a week -- this will make a great dinner, some great thin slices for sandwiches and then over-cooked for another hour in a crockpot for shredded meat for tacos.

one of my favorite sandwich haunts in denver:

http://www.racinesrestaurant.com/lunch_dinner.htm

Santa Fe Grill
Grilled sourdough bread with white cheddar cheese, fire roasted green chile strip and cilantro mayonnaise.
with fresh roasted turkey 9.99
with prime rib 12.99


Now I make this at home as well with roasting peppers on my little weber. Follow any good recipe book for roasting peppers. If you have a gas fired stove, you can do this in your house right on the burners. Use a few for the current dish and freeze in ziplock baggies for future use. If you have never fireroasted peppers -- try to learn the tricks and you will find a very cheap way to impress your friends. You cannot get this taste out of a can. Experiment with the wide variety available at your local grocer. This can be fun!

I used a rib roast on mark-down. I like the roast to be medium roasted. Fresh cilantro, grilled red onion, a good white cheddar, very good whole bread (I sometimes slum with Orowheat brand) and you will be in grilled sandwich heaven.

Some chips, a pickle spear, and a good beer and you are all set. If you have the bucks and you want to go out to the local restaurant --do it on a good day, use the patio, and spend a few hours with friends.

[Viking Prince]

Lunch time for me is always boring unless I can go to a small family run restaurant. I detest the brown bag and the office microwave. I detest the fast food burger emporiums.

What I like are the little places where you sit down, eat off of a plate with real utensils, and enjoy something that you would never make at home.

For example -- I love roasted chunks of beef in a pakprika sauce with noodles. My sweetie does not. So a bit of Hungarian goulash is a perfect lunch for me.

Not to mention a small apple crepe or peach strudel for a dessert. I have never been a great pastry person in the home, so desserts are a real reason to go out and eat. If I am brown bagging it - a trip to the small restaurant for a dessert and coffee is a perfect break.

So -- what are your stories of the little hole-in-the-wall restaurants? I want your stories and what you like to eat when in there.

[Viking Prince]

Here's an easy dish that is summery from a small local place:

Baked Tilapia with cucumber relish

Bake fish at 350 (for about 10 minutes if normal fillets)

Relish: peeled and large-chopped cucumber (remove seeds before chopping), thin sliced red onion, and radish sliced into sticks (not diced), chopped fresh dill and tossed and moistened with sour cream.

Serve with a cilantro rice and veggie. Just like mom would make and all of 25 minutes in the kitchen.

[Viking Prince]

Another great sandwich idea that is easy for homemade fast food or from a street vendor – wraps!

I use 9 inch tortillas – either whole wheat or flour work fine. This is already a light meal, but I do not go overboard on the calorie cutting with special tortillas.



For this wrap, I am using:

• leftover rotisserie turkey, sliced thin
• parmesan cheese and artichoke dip
• red onion, thin sliced
• roma tomato, sliced thin
• romain lettuce, trimmed out the stem
• tortillas, warmed

The key to a wrap is using very fresh tortillas that are slightly warmed. Do not let them dry out though. If you are warming in a toaster oven, be certain to turn it off before placing the tortillas in the oven. Spread 2 tablespoons of the dip on ½ of the tortilla, leaving about 1 inch edge clean on each side of the tortilla to fold the ends in before rolling. After the dip, lay out the turkey slices, veggies, and finally the lettuce. Fold in the clean edges and roll up starting with the filling half first. Cut in half on a bit of an angle and plate to serve.

If want to be traditional and less lazy -- use cream cheese, canned artichoke hearts, fresh grated parmesan cheese, and a bit of mayonnaise rather than the dip. I was lazy and just putting this together from leftovers in the fridge. Yum!

[Viking Prince]

Not a restaurant, but could have been a really nice club. Instead it was my brother-in-laws home. Oldest daughter's wedding reception. Move the furniture off the main floor and set up round tables with umbrellas, tropical colored table cloths along with sturdy wooden folding chairs. Then add a Hawaiian buffet with jerk chicken, BBQ beef, BBQ shrimp, and lots of fruit and sides. Add in a pina colada and mai thai hard cocktail bar, great selection of beers and wines for refreshments. -- And best of all there were hula girls and a Polynesian singer with guitar. Now add some tiki lights plus lots of guests in tropical attire and voila -- a Polynesian night club filled with tourists to dance, drink, and eat the night away.

[Viking Prince]

Not a sandwich, but something that is an absolute necessity for summer sandwiches -- corn on the cob. Boiled and shucked or soaked with the corn covered and then roasted. Mmmmm. There is nothing better. In the local Kroger Stores we have the current crop of Colorado's own Olathe corn. You do not really boil the corn as much as drop in and pull out of hot water. All you need to do is heat the corn up -- cooking only toughens the corn. In the Viking household the secret is in using browned butter and pressed garlic. No salt or pepper. Brush the browned garlic butter on lightly and enjoy.

Every small town has a festival moment or two during the year. For Olathe:

Olathe Sweet Corn Fest :: Biggest, Best, Little Festival in the U.S.!
The Olathe Sweet Corn Festival, held annually in the small town of Olathe Colorado, is full of excitement, relaxation, food, fun, shopping, music, ...

My sweetie and I might be taking a road trip for some of the fun.

[Viking Prince]

The Minimalist
101 Simple Salads for the Season



The Minimalist: 101 Simple Salads for the Season

Yes, from the NY Times. I am always a sucker for pretty pictures of food. Many are really bad ideas, but there are some that are worth giving a try. Number 3 is a simple cucumber salad. I cannot call myself Viking without doing one of these every few weeks. I use it as a cold relish with the evening meals. Now that cucumbers are cheaper (it is summer, yeah!) you can do this or another simple salad and help both your budget as well as your taste buds at the same time.

I will follow up with some of my own salads that I make everyday. Give me yours as well. Tossed, stirred, chlled, and warm. However you make your salads.

[Viking Prince]

My favorite summer salad starts with a basic cold pasta, marinated quartered artichoke hearts, olives, and red onion. Then add your choice of cheese, meat, and toss with Italian-style oil and vineger. The meat can be salami, chicken, beef, salmon, shrimp or whatever. The cheese can be a moozerella cheese cubed, feta crumbled, or a hard cheese rough grated. Basic pasta salad with whatever is in the fridge. Make the batches for only the meal at hand and have no leftovers. This keeps each meal interesting.

[Viking Prince]

I just did my basic summer salad (see prior post) using steelhead trout. Not as tasty as wild salmon, but just as good in this type of salad. Steelhead trout are just rainbow trout that have migrated out into deeper waters and changed their diet from flies (see wiki Rainbow trout - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Hey, salmon is related, but the steelhead were cheaper and this dish was in quantity. Along with the usual ingrediants, I also tossed in a jar of oil packed sundried tomato julienned.

[Viking Prince]

I was preparing a potato casserole yesterday and thought a brief thread on sauces might be useful. I will start off with some general suggestions when using béchamel as the French would call the sauce. This is simply a basic white sauce.

The most common method of preparation is to toss butter into a sauce pan. Sauté some fine diced onion, add some other spicing, add flour, and to finally add milk to create the basic sauce. Stir until thickened and you have a sauce, but not a very good sauce though. The French would never agree that this is a béchamel sauce.

Béchamel sauce can be adapted to suit every taste and every dish. The most obvious adjustment is to make it more or less liquid by adjusting the flour and butter. I am not suggesting a complicated technique here. Just use 1 tablespoon of butter and flour to one cup of liquid for a thin sauce. Add another tablespoon of each for a medium sauce and a total of three tablespoons for a thick sauce. Just do not fall into the trap of adding a bit of flour at a time until it is just right. The sauce needs to cook and the final sauce is not what you see immediately.

You can also be more traditional and start with veal, chicken, or vegetable stock and balloon whisk in light cream to finish the sauce after baking. You can also darken the flour in the pan oil to give the sauce a stronger flavor, but be careful to not also burn the butter. And rather than use butter, you can also experiment with vegetable fats. Try to mix different types of béchamel with the different dishes and see how this changes the results.

One component that is common to many oven-cooked dishes is béchamel sauce. I use this as a base for a great many sauces. Rather than prepare it in a quick and easy manner, I will oven bake the sauce (using an over safe sauce pan). I slow bake my sauce for about 30 – 45 minutes in a moderate oven (usually about 250F). This will give you better and richer results than a slow cook on the stove top because of the distribution of heat.

When preparing oven-cooked dishes, I will butter the dish before adding the ingredients. If you don't butter the dish, the lower layers (pasta, vegetables, potatoes, and meats or what ever your using in the casserole) will stick to the bottom of the dish and ruin the recipe. I will also usually add a thin layer of béchamel sauce to the bottom of the buttered dish. This will create a crispy "crust" similar to top of the dish when cooked in the oven.

One problem with cheese and béchamel is the cheese separates in the oven. If you have too thin a sauce, the additional oil will break the sauce. For this reason, it is best to prepare the cheese sauce prior to baking rather than rely upon the sauce to absorb the oils as the cheese breaks down in the oven. and whatever you do -- do not follow the recipes that just toss flour, spicing, butter, shredded cheese, and milk into the dish prior to baking to thicken as juices are produced. This may be the way Betty Crocker did it, but this loses so much flavor and gives a very inconsistent result.

[Viking Prince]

This is not a sauce, but rubs serve a similar purpose. I have a couple of ribeye steaks to grill tonight and I was thinking about using a rub on the meat prior to grilling. I have never done this type of grilling before and that is as good a reason as any to give it a try. From Texas Beef Council - Recipe Book - Rubs & Marinades

Ingredients
8 Tbsp. paprika
6 Tbsp. Kosher salt
2 Tbsp. fine ground black pepper
1 Tbsp. cumin
1 Tbsp. granulated garlic
1 tsp. cayenne pepper

So does anybody have another rub that they use on grilling steaks?

[Viking Prince]

Another holiday and that means another salad for the family gathering buffet. This time, it is for Turkey Day and I thought that something with cranberries would be good.


thin sliced (not shredded) red cabbage,
thin sliced Granny Smith apple,
dried cranberries,
toasted chopped pecans,
crumpled gorgonzola or bleu cheese

The salad dressing can be vinegar (balsamic is good), oilive oil, sugar, salt, fresh coarse ground black pepper. Toss all but the apples and allow to marinate with the dressing for a few hours (as if you can do everything just before serving a family gathering) and then add the apples just before serving. This will do fine on a buffet table. If you are going to plate serve, use less cranberries, nuts, and cheese in the salad itself. Then dress each plate with the reserved ingediants.

A shortcut would be to use something like Newman's Lite Walnut and Cranberry Dressing and substitute chopped walnuts for the pecans.

[Viking Prince]

If you are baking fish, an easy sauce is simply to use a bit of wine with trout, salmon, or your favorite oily fish under a loose foil in the oven. I might also add some fresh or par-boiled veggies to the steam bath with the fish such as onions, tomato slices, and carrot sticks. This works best with some fresh hebs stuffed in the cavity or in the baking pan if using fillets.

Remove the baked fish and veggies, but keep them warm. Drain, strain, and reserve the wine and fish juices. Reduce. Add new chopped fresh herbs and then blend in a bit of strained yohgurt and sour cream (or whipping cream). Reduce again. Serve over fish and veggies or on the side. You can also speed the process by using a bit of wine and the fresh herbs while the fish is baking. Add the cream and yohgurt and reduce. When the fish is done, reduce the strained baking pan juices and then combine with the marinated herb and cream reduction.

This is easy and still elegant. This can be a one dish main course meal -- good enough for company and easy enough for everyday cooking.

[Viking Prince]

There is also the grilled meat salads to consider. Prepare the meat the day before and it is easy to put together for a great meal.

My favorite is grilled salmon -- about 4-5 ounces per serving, use thicker fillets to keep moist. Grilled is best, but baked at 350 for 20-25 minutes will do just fine as well.

The key is to grill/bake the salmon with the salad dressing -- lightly brush the salmon with olive oil and then cover with the dressing. I like a honey mustard (homemade, but the store brands work for this as well). About 1/2 way through the cooking, rebaste with more dressing. After cooking, let cool to room temp and then pop in the refrigeration. Best to let come back to room temp before serving.

Asparagus should also be prepped a day ahead. Just trim and steam/boil in your usual manner. When cooked, place in a storage container with the salad dressing and marinate in the refrigerator over night.

The rest of the salad is easy -- spring greens lightly tossed with the dressing, sliced hardboiled egg, thin sliced red onion, thin sliced cucumber, roasted red bell pepper (store bought, drained), carmalized pecans or walnuts, and of course the salmon. Serve a portion of the dressing on the side as well in small personal compotes. Garnish with fresh dill.

Similar salads can be made with other seafood, chicken, pork or beef tenderloin sliced if you wish. The key is to use the salad dressing for a basting medium and to cool overnight to marry the flavor. Do the same with any cooked veggies. Do not overlook small red potatoes, fresh peas, red beets as potential foils to go with your meat choice.