craveytrain

For my b-day, the girlie took me to Cafe Caprice. It was very tasty. It’s a sorta fusion style food. They grab from all over. Allow me to go into greater detail.

Appetizer

Shrimp and Grilled Corn Salad on crisp tostones, with garlic, lime crema, mizuna salad

While it was a table appeteizer, well, the girlie doesn’t eat seafood, so it was just for me. I gotta say, though it was lacking in portion size, these things were simply outstanding. Just an awesome flavor. Honestly, they were my fav thing of the meal, and that’s saying a lot, cause I really enjoyed the meal.

Salad

House Salad mixed field green salad

She got it, I really have no idea. She kept going on about how good the dressing was. She didn’t share, so I guess it was good.

Romaine Heart Salad with garlic croutons, shaved red onion, Asiago cheese, traditional Caesar dressing

Ok, we have both been sick, and my body needed salad. It told me to order salad. This is not normally what I go with. I hate stalky lettuce, and I don’t care much for the flavor, so I want lots of strong flavors to override the lettuce. I tell you this so you understand that when I say I really enjoyed this salad, it gives it some gravity.

Entree

Cornbread and Chorizo stuffed Chicken Breast with ancho apple butter sauce

She got it, and I tried it. She really liked it. She let me try a bite, and honestly, I thought it was a bit dry (the chicken, I expected the stuffing to be a bit dry). She said the sauce it was served with compensated for that. She didn’t share that either, so I will have to take her word on it. However, since I felt it was a bit dry and this is my review, not our review (though that did just spawn a great idea of doing a he said/she said restaurant review blog) this is the only place I will knock off from a perfect score.

Pumpkin Seed-Crusted Pork Schnitzel with tri-colored spaetzle

There were several entrees I was trying to decide between. She told me she read the menu ahead of time and was expecting me to get the lamb. Honestly, I seriously considered it, but my love for spaetzle won out. Let me tell you, this was an extraordinary item. Very, very tasty and the glaze on it was just… undescribable. Turns out, you get common sides with the entrees that weren’t listed. I don’t know if they are seasonal or what. It included steamed bock choy, some sort of fusion between broccoli and cauliflower, steamed and lastly beets. Now I know why I don’t eat beets. However, it was the “brocco-flower” that intriqued me. She hates cauliflower, I’m not crazy about broccoli. However, this item we both enjoyed.

Dessert

Well, the desserts aren’t on their site and well… I remember I had the special which was a type of bread pudding. She had some sort of pie. They were both very good (though I will say I thought the bread pudding was better).

Service

Service was great. We had several people taking care of us: one main waiter and several others that made sure our consumables were taken care of.

Ambience

It was actually very quaint. A small house (what used to be Basil’s) turned into a more-or-less reservation only restaurant. Very intimate.

Bread

They had bread with the meal, and it was good, but what stood out was the cinnamon butter. That stuff was great.

Rating

I hestitate to do a “scoring” here, because, let’s be honest, a lot of this stuff is subjective. However, if anyone actually cares about this review and is using it to help guide their eating decisions, I feel I should give a metric.

5 - Perfect
4 - Damned Good
3 - Pretty Tasty
2 - O.K.
1 - Not eating there again

I have to give this place a 4.5 only taking off for the dryness of the girlie’s entree. Short of that, a perfect meal.

So, thanks to a couple x-mases from my grandmother, I had some $100 worth of gift cards to Dillards. Well, I’m not into clothes atm really, but I got a nice Le Creuset 5.5 Qt. Enamled Cast Iron Dutch Oven. Ain’t she purty?

What better to break her in on than an attempt at my perfect chili. I have been trying to perfect my chili for years. I have tried lots of different things from chili meat (coarse ground chuck) to ground beef, to stew meat, to caldillo, to venison, to pork, etc. And while I did stumble across a really tasty roasted green chile pork stew along the way, but I was looking for chili. Texas Red to be specific. Now, I am of the belief that chili doesn’t have beans. Now, that’s not to say that i don’t like beans in my chili-like concoction. However, I call that beef stew or chili soup or something along those lines. I didn’t grow up that way, that’s just how I eventually decided I feel about chili. So, after years of trials and tribulations, the inaugural cooking in my new pot is simmering away at this very moment while I write this post.

What you may be thinking (especially if you are from Texas) is What the hell? He’s gonna give away his chili recipe? You see, chili recipes are closely guarded secrets in Texas (and they may be else where). However, I like to share good recipes with the world (or with both of you that read my blog). That and I think this chili may be the first recipe post than I can truly call my own. Not saying that no one has done it this way before, but if they did, I didn’t know about it.

Depending on the crop of habs, this chili ranges from kinda mild by my standards to decent and spicy. However, if you want something with plenty of kick (I call it The Pain, partly so I can say I brought The Pain), don’t seed the habaneros. Warning, it will be hot. I’m not telling you it will be spicy, that it will burn your lips, or that it will tingle your senses. I am telling you right now it will be hot. Like you will regret it the next day hot. That’s what I do when I make chili for cookoffs.

So, without further ado:

• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 2 hours
• Servings: 6 to 8

Ingredients

• 1 lb stew meat
• 1.5 lbs caldillo beef (chuck diced in 3/4” cubes)
• 2 tbsp Essence
• 4 tbsp chili powder
• 2 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp fresh ground pepper
• 2 tsp ground oregano
• .5 tsp cinnamon
• .5 cup of masa harina (corn flour)
• .5 cup of olive oil
• .25 cup manteca (lard)
• 1 large sweet yellow onion, diced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 habaneros, seeded & diced
• 3 chipotle peppers (in adobo sauce), chopped
• 1 8oz can tomato sauce
• 3 tbsp adobo sauce
• 2 bottles of beer (I like Negro Modelo)
• 1 qt beef stock
• 1 oz bittersweet chocolate

Prep

Put the meat in a large bowl and cover with salt, pepper, cinnamon, Essence, 2 tbsp chili powder and 1 tbsp cumin. Don’t mess around with the spoon, get your hands in there and break up all the little pieces of meat, making sure seasoning gets on all of it. Cover meat with masa and again, make sure all the pieces of meat are coated.

Heat up a heavy bottomed pot (or a dutch oven) to medium high and add about a third of the olive oil (enough to cover the bottom of the pan).

Cooking

When the oil is hot, add half the meat and then half the manteca. Let meat brown and start to carmelize. Don’t worry if ya burn some. Turn the meat and let it brown on all sides. Reserve it off to the side with a slotted spoon (leaving as much liquid as possible). Add another third of the olive oil and the rest of the meat. Add the rest of the manteca. Brown the meat the same way as before. When done, reserve meat off to the side with the rest.

Turn the temperature down to medium , add the rest of the olive oil to the pot and then the onions, garlic and habaneros. Saute for 5 - 7 mins until they get soft. Add the tomato sauce, the chipotle peppers and the adobo sauce. Add the rest of the chili powder, cumin and oregano. Bring to a boil.

Once it is boiling, add both beers deglaze the pot. Boil for 10 mins to reduce. Add the meat back and the beef stock. Simmer for 1.5 hours until the meat is tender.

Once meat is tender, add chocolate to chili and stir in to melt.

Serve it up, and drop me a line to let me know how you liked it.

For valentine’s day, the girlie and I went to Siena for dinner. This was the first time we had gone out to eat for Valentine’s day. In prior years I made big dinners and we stayed at home. I have this aversion to doing things how everyone else does them. I hate being cliche. However, honestly, I didn’t feel like making dinner this year, so we went out to eat.

We made reservations for 8, got there at 8 and got seated promptly, which I was jazzed about. I had heard horror stories about going out to eat on v-day and having to wait hours. The service was a bit slow, but nothing really bad. It was to be expected. For the evening they had a limited menu. We both got 1 thing from each course:

Now, the food was good. It really was very good. However it was not great. The problem is, with the price is that with a few glasses of wine, the bill was $165 (not including tip) for the 2 of us. That’s a bit pricey. Now, I don’t mind paying that, and it wouldn’t be the first time. Two places I have been to that come to mind in that price range are K-Paul’s (Paul Prudhomme) and Blue Ginger (Ming Tsai). Both of these places were exquisite. Everything I ate just melted in my mouth. Everything covered my taste palette and had my buds screaming for more (even when my body couldn’t hold it). Things just weren’t as good here. The crab wasn’t as fresh as I would have liked it to be, the veal was a bit tough and vegetable medley that came with it was bland.

Siena was good. It was very good, but I just don’t feel it justified the price compared to those other places. However, it was good enough that we want to go back and try it on a non-special menu occassion to get a better feel for it. So I tenatively give it a B+ or so.