Merry Christmas!
WOW. Okay, so I’m an utter blog failure. After being away for so long, it gets harder and harder to come back, haha. However, I do have a whole lot of stuff on my computer that I can post, if only I remember the meals themselves. And with the year coming to an end and all, it seems as good a time as any to start again. Hopefully I’ll be posting more regularly for 2012…or at least that’s the plan. ♥
Meanwhile, I hope everyone has been having a great holiday and Christmas! It always feels a bit anti-climatic when Christmas falls on a weekend. It’s a day off ANYWAY so it doesn’t feel special at all. And tomorrow is back to the grind, which is no fun at all. The week between Christmas and New Year is kind of a drag, too. I didn’t really do anything too special this year. Being Japanese means Christmas is just about presents, more or less. (We’re more New Year’s people, and even that has been more and more low-key in my family in recent years). But I always try to get a log cake since it’s any excuse for seasonal sweets is a good one.
I got it from Les Delices bakery again this year. Last year’s Bûche de Noël was from there as well, and I had been a bit disappointed by the mildness of the praline cake. I decided to go with the classic chocolate this year, and it was definitely much better! The vanilla cake was very moist and soft, and the chocolate mousse icing whipped and wonderful. Not too sweet, which seems to be a pretty consistent trait with the bakery items at Les Delices.
More pics under the cut, including a poached pear tart, also from the same bakery:
Les Delices Bakery
A friend of mine highly recommended a bakery in Rockville called Les Delices a while back. (I did a post on their Christmas cookies a few months ago). I love this place! It’s off of Gude Drive in Rockville, in a rather smallish strip mall. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but once you walk in and the buttery aroma wafts around you, you know you’ve come to the right place. ♥
I’ve only tried their mango and black currant cakes so far, and they’re both quite delicious! Pictured above is the black currant cake. It was a great balance of tart and sweet. I loved that it wasn’t too heavy or cloying!
Remember to bring cash, as they don’t take credit cards there.
A few more pics:
dessert dinner holiday: cake cheese comfort food ham pastries
by Lindsey
2 comments
Easter
Happy May Day everybody! I’m veering off my slowly trickling Hawaii posts to write about last week’s tour de force of culinary mastery known as the Easter Pot-luck Dinner of Epicness. Hosted by my friends who also brought you their Christmas Dinner (where, if you recall, we couldn’t congratulate ourselves enough for a job well done), the event was filled to the brim with so much food and fabulosity that the guests hardly knew what to do with it all. And to make matters even more intense, we had a rowdy game of Taboo afterward that I don’t think I’ve recovered from yet. (Ever notice that when you’re playing this game, your voice keeps rising and rising until you realize you’re screaming at the top of your lungs? I think somehow this contributes to the effectiveness of your strategy, because everyone gets so crazed that they shout back anything, everything that comes to mind, and ONE of those things has to be the right answer!!)
Pictured above is the ham, which our lovely hostess made using Alton Brown’s City Ham recipe. Alton is always a good bet, and it certainly was the case here. The ham actually came out quite late in the evening, but I still scarfed down a few succulent slices despite the fact that I’d already eaten enough food for 3 people. The crust was wondrous and crispy, and the meat perfectly cooked.
The rest:
Holiday Cakes
What’s any holiday without a tasty cake to celebrate it? Every Christmas for the last few years, I’ve gotten a Bûche de Noël – Christmas log cake – and each year I try to get them from different bakeries.
This year I decided to try one from the aforementioned Les Delices bakery in Rockville. They had a choice of praline or chocolate, and I went with the former (pictured above). I thought it was okay…maybe a little subdued in flavor? At least the icing wasn’t too oily or thick, but it left me feeling like it could’ve been a little sweeter. Perhaps the chocolate was the way I should’ve gone.
More after the jump:
Captain White’s Seafood
Captain White’s Seafood City is located on the Southwest Waterfront, right on the water. It’s pretty chaotic getting in there, and trying to find parking is pretty tricky business. However, it’s worth the effort if you’re a seafood lover! My friends and I checked it out last Saturday afternoon, and the place was swamped with people. We waited for seemed like forever to get our food. (O____o);;
I got the clams and fries box, pictured above. It’s a lot of food for a good price! I should have gotten some packets of cocktail sauce, but I was too lazy to walk back there from the seating area to fetch any. XD;;
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, everyone! \(^O^)/ Hope you had a great start to 2010, and a lovely winter holiday. I apologize for neglecting this blog for the past few weeks. I kept meaning to update, but it’s been a bit of a lazy Christmas season for me. I’m resolving to be more active hereon for the new year, and to catch up on my backlog of posts I’ve been meaning to get to for a while.
New Year happens to be the biggest holiday of the year for Japanese people, and like most celebrations, it centers around the food. Wiki has an article about the traditional “osechi” food here, which is served on New Year’s Day. My mom prepares it every year, though this year’s spread was much more scaled back than usual.
But first, we must have the “toshi-koshi” noodles on New Year’s eve:
Merry Christmas!
I know…am very late with this post. But I figured I might as well put it up, since I had the photo on hand, and because it looks so cute. XD;
This Bûche de Noël cake is from Whole Foods. I’ve gotten log cakes from different places in the last several years, and this is certainly one of the more festive looking ones. Unfortunately, it looked a lot better than it tasted! The outer frosting was made from a very oily butter cream, and had the consistency of Crisco. Ugh. The chocolate frosting on the inside was a little lighter, though not too much better. The flavor of the cake itself wasn’t bad though, and had good texture.
I’ll be looking elsewhere for a Bûche de Noël next year, though.
afternoon tea dessert restaurants: cake cupcakes d.c. pastries sandwiches tea
by Lindsey
4 comments
Tea at Mandarin Oriental
If I could, I would have afternoon tea every Sunday of my life. Warm, flaky scones slathered in mounds of clotted cream and strawberry preserves! Dainty finger sandwiches made from cucumbers and lobster! Gorgeous desserts of all kinds, from cakes and chocolates to panna cottas and creme brulee! And of course, the perfect cup of tea to accompany every last bite. Fabulous! (*____*)
A good friend and I made our way to the Mandarin Oriental on a recent Sunday afternoon to partake in just such a tea, and it was utterly divine. It was actually my first tea at a restaurant in the city, though I’ve been to privately thrown teas here before. The Mandarin Oriental holds its tea Thursdays through Sundays between 2:30 and 4:30 pm in their beautiful Empress Lounge, located right beyond their main foyer and overlooking a garden. The room is gorgeous, with high ceilings, decadent wood paneling, and calming earth tones that match very well with the view outside the floor to ceiling windows.
We arrived about 15 minutes early, but they were nice enough to seat us anyway, while they set up. They do their teas a little differently here, than at other places. Some, like the lovely Secret Garden Tea Company in Vancouver, bring out each course separately. Others, like the Carlyle in New York City, bring out all three courses at once, on tiered plates. At the Mandarin, everything is set up buffet style, and you can go up and help yourself, going back for several rounds in whatever order you want. It’s a tea lover’s dream.
This here is the dessert buffet, featuring at least eight different desserts! But I’m getting a little ahead of myself, here. More after the jump:
Proof
Prooooooooof!! I love this place! One of the first times I went was for dinner, where I had the best chilled asparagus soup of my life! Everything here is so well thought out and presented that you can’t help but enjoy every last bite. Of course, their $12 lunch + wine special only sweetens the deal, and I’ve been back there quite often to take a long and delicious break from the work day.
Their “lunch crush” menu changes up a little, but their usual staples include the duck confit, shrimp burger and steak salad. There’s usually a sandwich (panini of some kind) and a pasta dish as well. My favorite pasta dish with homemade sausage hasn’t been on the menu for a while, which is a shame. Each of these comes with either the house white or red. Mm…
Here’s the excellent ahi tuna tartare that my friends ordered, and it comes with crispy (flash fried?) seaweed and avocado. The sesame inspired sauce is described as a “wasabi soy emulsion.” Definitely one of the best tuna tartars ever!
This week I ordered off-menu (outside the lunch special) and got the lamb burger:
